Shadow Tag Voting

[M0atz]

 

I believe Shadow Tag should not be banned. All is down.

 

• You can easily revenge-kill Gothitelle with a STAB Dark moves from prominent Pokemon such as Bisharp, Weavile, Absol, Tyranitar etc. Gothitelle is also easily walled by these Dark types.

• Gothitelle is only good against stall-oriented teams and is rendered useless against offensive teams.

• There aren't that many Pokemon Gothitelle can set up on in PRO. Therefore it is often dead weight in a team.

• Gothitelle is beaten by strong wall-breakers such as Togekiss and Mew.

• Banning Shadow Tag will increase the amount of stall teams and Klefki.

• Many players have invested many hours and a considerable amount of in-game currency to obtain viable Shadow Tag Pokemon.

[Zinsmiter]

 

I vote for Shadow Tag to be banned.

 

Incoming wall of text, read at your own risk!

 

Gothitelle is capable of eliminating a large amount of pokemon sets from the game without any form of counterplay what so ever aside from not including this pool of pokemon sets in your teams. It heavily restricts teambuilding in an unhealthy way because you can't make up for a weakness to Gothitelle. There is no help to get from the other pokemons in your team because you can't switch to your counters.

Many say Talonflame restricts team building the same way but this isn't remotely true at all because if you have a pokemon weak to Talonflame you can always get help from the rest of your pokemon slots with Stealth Rock support and resists. I personally used Stealth Rock and Lanturn as a pivot on a hyper offensive team including 3 pokemon otherwise getting completely destroyed by Talonflame. Still it wasn't a problem because i could support these pokemon. This is just not the case for Shadow Tag.

 

People say that it can only remove a few walls like Blissey which is simply not true. You might have a Gothitelle with bad IVs which lowers the list of things you can take out or maybe you are just underestimating the pokemon or playing it wrong but if you think this pokemon is only capable of very specific trapping you are wrong.

Gothitelle can take advantage of a large variety of pokemon sets and also abuse its typing's resistances to increase the list of targets.

I played a hyper offense team with an Overheat infernape once. I happened to knock out a pokemon with Overheat. Afterwards Gothitelle trapped and eliminated my Infernape. Last time i checked, Overheat Infernape wasn't a wall (some guy even came with ridicilous comments like i should just use Taunt on all my pokemon Gothitelle could beat with or without support like stat drops from the Overheat. Nice team building!). Of course this example is also true for any users of Draco Meteor. They can instantly become trapped and setup bait and there is nothing the opponent can do.

 

Now there is a lot of ways this pokemon can be further abused and some has been done and some has not yet..

 

The true power of Gothitelle is that you can design your team around taking advantage of everything Gothitelle removes. This means that you can use a rain team, for example, with more special attackers than you would normally use (soon featuring Choice Specs!) because you know that you can just remove a list of counters including Blissey that otherwise could wall your team (because you designed it this way). Even if the enemy knows you have Gothitelle and tries to switch in and out you only have to get a single prediction right and it's over. This takes pretty much no skill. It's the same as flipping a coin and every time you lose you can flip again until you get it right and when you do there is no re-flipping for the opponent.

 

Another example is hazards teams. You can setup hazards and maybe they bring in a Starmie (which is a very common spinner) to use rapid spin. You can then trap it, knock it out and proceed to drown your opponent in hazards with your Stealth rock+Spikes Skarmory for example, while using a team that forces more switches without any resistance from the opponent.

Many claim that you can just use Life Orb on your Starmie and then Gothitelle can't setup. This is also not true. I actually thought myself that Starmie with Life Orb could win but I personally tested this on showdown and assuming the full IVs, Gothitelle won against the Life Orb starmie, even with Hydro Pump ,which by the way pretty much no one uses on their Starmie because it's not fun to lose to RNG in a system where you can gain 1 rating (this is not an exaggerration) or lose like 30 :Grin:

 

The ways this pokemon can be abused goes on and on. You can use screens so Gothitelle can now setup on an even bigger list of pokemon than before. You can use Memento and drop the stats of a key threat while proceeding to setup and eliminate this as well, opening the door for the rest of your team.

 

And all of this is just the trapping of a pokemon which is the main strenght and why you use it. Many may think that the power of Gothitelle is getting a +6 spatk/+6 spdef physically invested slow calm mind sweeper and believe that it is this aspect that is the power of Gothitelle which is not the case. Yes the sweeping can be countered with your Weavile or Bisharp but it is simply icing on the cake for Gothitelle if it can get away with more after eliminating a target. If it has taken out the key component of the enemy team it has done its job. If you have no counters in your team for this slow sweeper(or you did have them in your team but they just got taken out) then it can proceed to sweep or do heavy damage to even more members of your team. And if you do have counters? Guess what, he can just switch to his counter if he sees another target to trap later (because he obviously has a counter to the common and well known revenge killers like Weavile and Bisharp in his team with Gothitelle).

 

For players knowing what double switches are you also cannot predict a switch-out of Gothitelle and switch yourself to gain momentum this way, which also makes you completely predictable for that turn since you have to stay in, essentially giving your Bisharp's counter a free turn (it could be a Hippowdon switching in and setting up Stealth Rock or a Poliwrath getting a free Circle Throw/Scald).

 

EDIT: People spending a lot of time to get a pokemon shouldn't be an argument when it comes to balance. Most players knew fully well that Shadow Tag could be banned any day, just like i knew that my Blaziken with Baton Pass and Swords Dance could be banned any day and it did. Still i didn't go to forums and complain about how unfair it is when i spent time and money to get Blaziken and use this combo to give boosts to another pokemon. It's my own fault entirely.

 

Taking all these factors and some i might have missed into account i see it as unhealthy for the metagame and believe it should be banned.

[Iznatejairo]

 

I think they should not prohibit it because if they knew at the outset what made the ability to change pokemons were not implemented, it was already known before implementing what made the skill so I see a bit unfair to ban it now as people Has found utility to this pokemons. Just as there are people who know how to counteract it either with sinister attacks or with any other tactic. I also see it unfair to forbid it since the player who has this pokemons needed a long time to be able to get this pokemons with that ability and with good ivs because it is very difficult to get out of the pokemons and already with skill, nature and good ivs nor the story.

A greeting.

[Maleficent]

 

My vote is don't ban Shadow Tag

 

Try to have a Gothitelle in your pvp team, you will see it's not that useful at all. I have tried one in my team and it's definitely the last useful pokemon and sometimes a waste of slot. Gothitelle only good again some special-attack staller like Blissey, Venusaur, Clefable. And every offensive or Dark type or U-turner, Volt Switcher, Roarer pokemon can counter it easily, like literally. In my opinion, Gothitelle is easy to counter than the combo of Blissey and Slowbro, or even Talonflame force everyone to carry a rock type. So why ban a pokemon if you can counter it in many ways? The meta game now is full of similar stallers and it looks so boring to me, and all you can think of is ban this and ban that? God just free them, I want to see a meta game that's full of surprise and creativity, not like this.

 

The reason Smogon banned Shadow Tag is because Gothitelle can hold choice item then use Trick to swap to opponent, this way it can break everything, this call Literally Satan Gothitelle. But in PRO, Trick is not working. Finally if you ban Shadow Tag, then Arena Trap has to be banned as well !

[Kill3rrrr]

[glow=red]I vote for it to be BANNED[/glow]

As a team atlest has a def and 1 sp def wall if jumped on them its easy set up. Once walls are down means no switching any more makes team crippled thus i think it should be banned.

[Benikisaki]

I vote for Shadow Tag to be BANNED!

 

Everyone who made the bad experience to encounter one knows how annoying it is. Exactly, annoying, not overpowered. It requires no skill, wastes at least 20 minutes for taking out one poke, and is a guaranteed check for way too many important pokes in the PRO metagame. It's also true that it's easily revenge killed, but everything the Gothitelle-player has to do to avoid it, is switch that thing out if it gets countered. Yeah, cuz he CAN switch it out if threatened, but you cannot if Goth threatens you.

 

[Monokuma12]

i vote ban on ST goth

to long to set up just to kill one poke then he can just switch out when a threat comes in

 

 

[Mrgreen1091]

I vote NO BAN shadow tag, because someone must try hard to get one, its very rare and need ms to hunt. Why just because anyone cant own one or dont understand how to beat it, then ban it. I think its so unfair.

 

[Setzuen]

I vote Ban Shadow Tag, since we dont even have Team preview(and Dugtrio released too) its really unhealthy for the game...i know its counterable/having revenge killers but if you dont have a single revenge killer u just lose and u cant play around it to counter only one mon to change ur team so definetly vote ban for me :P

 

[Palpatine]

The voting session for Shadow Tag has now come to a conclusion so no more votes will be taken and the thread will be locked. I would like to thank everyone for their participation and cooperation. With that being said, the votes will be tallied up today and Shadow Tag will / will not be removed from ranked PvP based on the outcome.

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-Locked-