Make sure to link your alt to your smogon account with the /linksmogon command (as per the op) on ps before you decay to 84.9%! Glad to see you back man
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Announcement DPP OU Machamp Suspect Test (Machamp Banned)
- Thread starter Excal
- Start date
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It's interesting how the metagame analysis around DPP is skewed towards offense (even past 1500) but from what public data I can see, those who make the reqs mostly do stall/balance teams instead, and there's not any machamps on the ladder as expected. I would expect Machamp to not get banned as its clearly not broken or uncompetitive or prevalent enough to warrant a ban.
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It’s actually the exact opposite of this. Good players (especially on ladder). Optimise for strategies that are the most consistent. Relying on confusion from dynamic punch is not a reliable strategy.
It’s the same reason why some players forgo stronger inaccurate attacks, in favour of weaker more consistent moves. Ie. hydro pump vs surf. Yes, there are upsides to the more powerful move. But on occasion it will cause you to lose games on the spot.
Having as little variance as possible puts you in more control of the game. Which is why the players who are getting reqs aren’t using Machamp. They favour the consistency of stall & balance teams. It will be very hard to string together consistent wins if you’re relying on a large number of 50/50 chances to go your way.
I’m lucky I didn’t get fucked over by the champer too many times during this. I did lose to some nonsense (which I think the dpp ladder is more prone to compared to other OUs) but it fortunately didn’t take too long. I lost early on a couple of accounts so I just quit like 6 games in, prob didn’t take more than 60 total.
It was a miserable experience though, had to face paraspam like every other game and pray I didn’t get confused or flinched 30 times by jirachi. For sure voting BAN Machamp, it adds absolutely nothing positive to the metagame in my eyes and there are other fighting types you can use to fill its absence. I used jirachee’s specs tran blissey balanced (a favorite of mine I must admit), can make a couple tweaks to better adjust to the current metagame but gives you room to outplay most things. Can be a bit tough vs stall, you don’t have much breathing room and gotta keep starmie healthy so that tran can do its thing, and vs offense dders and luke are dangerous if you can’t keep rocks off, other than that cb tar in general is a tough mu bc of the nature of the team. Really solid to navigate the ladder though, 2 nat cures loom zapper gives you a lot of status control and having specs tran completely wall physical rachi while posing a huge threat is nice. Very funny that I got my almost max physdef bold zapdos 1v1d by machamp with no rocks and no para at least 5 times during the run though, that should tell you something. See you round
got it, I just used Jirachi/Breloom/Starmie/Zapdos/Tyranitar/Heatran all the way. I tried using some stall but it only really worked when I faced bad players then I'd just lose to someone good, Tyranitar balance/offense is definitely the way for ladder in my opinion. I'll say I think if we were to do a Jirachi/Iron Head suspect test then the reqs should be a bit harder I feel.
absolutely voting ban on Machamp and I've stated before why I think it should be banned but I'll make one final plea I guess. No drawback 100% accurate 100 BP fighting move that creates a coinflip (at best) should be the most obvious ban ever I feel. Even if you think Machamp brings some positives to the tier I don't see how it isn't overwhelmingly outweighed by the negatives, we truly don't need Machamp to break stall and I think removing Machamp could open up more reliable ways of beating stall by making Tyranitar even better. I don't know why you would want to keep this Pokemon in the tier, unless you're like ABR and just play DPP once a year for a month and wanna farm noobs with Machamp and coinflip vs the good players. Also I really dislike the narrative that the DPP council is ignoring the overwhelming demands of the DPP playerbase and creating distractions rather than addressing the real problem because this is just not true, for the most part the people who play and build the tier consistently seem pretty happy with it. I don't know, not much else to add that Excal hasn't said already, it should be pretty obvious why someone would want to ban Machamp but not Jirachi in my opinion and I sincerely hope we remove this blight on the tier.
As for DPP itself it's genuinely my favourite tier to play and I'm perfectly fine accepting it as it is and just doing small improvements in terms of tiering, I'm pretty opposed to any big changes as I think the tier is great. I'm not even as excited by the idea of banning Iron Head as I once was but if that's what the community wants then I think we should let it happen. This ladder was probably the worst introduction you could get to the tier and I think it was a lot of peoples first time trying to play it seriously which is kind of unfortunate. I'll just say I think DPP is a really hard tier to get into as it's dumb elements are right in your face as opposed to other tiers where the bs is maybe a bit more subtle. Also the lack of team preview but having a power level closer to BW than ADV is a challenge but with enough practice you can definitely overcome it. You might get a better experience trying out some of the seasonal tournaments rather than the ladder if you're interested in getting into the tier, but also not every tier is gonna be for everybody and that's fine.
That's all! Looking forward to seeing how SPL plays out.
Mostly just echoing previous points but cba to write up an essay
Machamp is only remotely an issue when paired with tremendous amounts of support. There are about 2.5 viable machamp structures that see regular play, focused on spreading as much paralysis as possible. If you let the majority of your team get paralyzed, you're asking for trouble regardless of the presence of machamp. mons like rachi, cbtar, (sd)loom are all going to fuck you up just as much or more than machamp, but bring much more utility in and of themselves. Machamp removed from paralysis/dpunch shenanigans is a mediocre pokemon at best - slow, with average bulk and poor defensive typing compounded by status/hazard vulnerability. No one even uses sash champ lead anymore, this was an innovation solely to respond to the influx of sash suicide leads circa the early 10s metagame, and it was never an issue. Custap champ is also rarely used, and outside of absurd luck isn't causing any problems. Its arguably healthier than something like breloom even considering dpunch shit.
Addressing rng - yes machamp can bullshit its way through teams, but people are only posting the most egregious examples here. For example hippo vs champ, champ only 4hkos at best. Same with Skarmory. For pokemon ubiquitous on machamps "best matchup" clef stall, not exactly a fantastic mu. Not to mention more solid checks like nidoqueen, phys def rotom, gyarados, phys def rachi etc.
Rachi gets many more opportunities to roll the dice, though less impactful on a hit by hit basis. On the other hand Gyarados only has a 20% chance to flinch with waterfall, but usually only needs one or two flinches to completely sweep a team. Compare the odds from breaking through a hippo w champ to gyarados flinching a zapdos - gyarados not only has higher odds but the hax also has far more gamebreaking potential as champ usually has to break through multiple pokemon with luck. gyarados and rachi have far more value on a team if no rng occurs.
Out of the 3 "flinchers" (champ, rachi, gyara), champ is imo the worst, least impactful and least commonly seen. not even getting into the issue of it being facilitated by rachi. It isn't even the most broken fighting type (breloom). not saying anything needs to be addressed but machamp would be quite low on the list. not sure why teal was being discounted btw, those stats speak for themselves independently. low usage, relatively low winrate... even in this test, most people posting reqs aren't even using machamp. no idea why this suspect is being conducted let alone why so many people are on the side of a ban. just because something is occasionally frustrating to play against doesn't mean its remotely broken
Machamp is only remotely an issue when paired with tremendous amounts of support. There are about 2.5 viable machamp structures that see regular play, focused on spreading as much paralysis as possible. If you let the majority of your team get paralyzed, you're asking for trouble regardless of the presence of machamp. mons like rachi, cbtar, (sd)loom are all going to fuck you up just as much or more than machamp, but bring much more utility in and of themselves. Machamp removed from paralysis/dpunch shenanigans is a mediocre pokemon at best - slow, with average bulk and poor defensive typing compounded by status/hazard vulnerability. No one even uses sash champ lead anymore, this was an innovation solely to respond to the influx of sash suicide leads circa the early 10s metagame, and it was never an issue. Custap champ is also rarely used, and outside of absurd luck isn't causing any problems. Its arguably healthier than something like breloom even considering dpunch shit.
Addressing rng - yes machamp can bullshit its way through teams, but people are only posting the most egregious examples here. For example hippo vs champ, champ only 4hkos at best. Same with Skarmory. For pokemon ubiquitous on machamps "best matchup" clef stall, not exactly a fantastic mu. Not to mention more solid checks like nidoqueen, phys def rotom, gyarados, phys def rachi etc.
Rachi gets many more opportunities to roll the dice, though less impactful on a hit by hit basis. On the other hand Gyarados only has a 20% chance to flinch with waterfall, but usually only needs one or two flinches to completely sweep a team. Compare the odds from breaking through a hippo w champ to gyarados flinching a zapdos - gyarados not only has higher odds but the hax also has far more gamebreaking potential as champ usually has to break through multiple pokemon with luck. gyarados and rachi have far more value on a team if no rng occurs.
Out of the 3 "flinchers" (champ, rachi, gyara), champ is imo the worst, least impactful and least commonly seen. not even getting into the issue of it being facilitated by rachi. It isn't even the most broken fighting type (breloom). not saying anything needs to be addressed but machamp would be quite low on the list. not sure why teal was being discounted btw, those stats speak for themselves independently. low usage, relatively low winrate... even in this test, most people posting reqs aren't even using machamp. no idea why this suspect is being conducted let alone why so many people are on the side of a ban. just because something is occasionally frustrating to play against doesn't mean its remotely broken
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Was unsure about whether to post my actual thoughts regarding the suspect or not, since one might say I have no stakes in this tier and also close to no experience playing it myself at the highest level (although I have watched it develop over the years), but I think there’s a point here from a pro ban perspective that perhaps hasn’t quite been made clear. The reason why I want Machamp gone and even got reqs to begin with (besides having nothing better to do than practice for the upcoming SPL I suppose) is that, the way I see it, there are no legitimate positives to keeping it in the metagame. Let me explain: I believe that, no matter the tier or generation, a strategy that is based and reliant on RNG or the extreme polarization of matchups should be banned even if it’s not considered “broken” in the traditional sense.
I don’t really mind that Jirachi is the more pressing issue, because to me that’s a much more complicated thing to tackle given its omnipresence in the tier (fueled by iron head paraflinch, sure, but not entirely based on it), and it’s a huge decision that could shake the metagame to its core. Machamp, to me, should be gone regardless of what happens to Jirachi. I think the metagame value associated to Machamp is purely theoretical and exists only within the realm of this ban discussion: I may well be wrong and you could point that out, but I sincerely doubt anyone would use Machamp because it’s a bulky fighter that can kinda check fire move Tyranitar better than Breloom. For the same reason I would instantly vote ban on any sort of statpassing (though I’m opposed to banning drypass), whatever the usage and winrates say, I want Machamp gone too; it’s inherently uncompetitive and unhealthy to the metagame regardless of the frequence with which it comes up or the perceived impact it has on the metagame at large.
Conversely, and following the very same rationale, I agree with the people who want Froslass back in the tier, as it’s a unique hazard setter that could have a legitimate place in the metagame. Let’s be honest for a moment, no one can tell me Abomasnow Froslass hail is even remotely close to being as good as Machamp paraspam, Froslass can’t even boost up and sweep your whole team like other fellow evasion users and is nowhere near as pressing or threatening as machamp. You could say I’m hypocritical for this but I think the upside of having Froslass in the tier to enrich the lead metagame far outweighs the almost inexistent chance of it getting away with evasion robbery in an actual game. With Machamp, it’s exactly the opposite.
Now, that being said, I wouldn’t mind a complex ban of getting rid of the punch or it+no guard or whatever, but I understand why that could be a policy nightmare as it creates a precedent (besides baton pass) for specific complex bans that could result in ultimately making the game less accessible for new players because of the amount of seemingly arbitrary restrictions placed on the mons that are available for use.
I admit there are two fair points that go hand in hand against this line of thinking insofar as it can be argued that Machamp has a legitimate place in the metagame (checking ttar as a breaker), and it could be used in that manner if Jirachi (or iron head) is taken out of the equation. But, as I have already explained, I think Machamp (or at least no guard dpunch) should be gone regardless of what happens to the other fellow.
I also think it’s dumb to say this is a decoy or the council’s way of delaying taking proper action. Simply put, there is NO way that if Machamp gets banned people will stop complaining about Jirachi (or whatever it is people deem broken) and demanding that action be taken because we have all hit ourselves with confusion after the council’s masterplan to divert the attention from the real issue. If people want a Jirachi suspect, it will still happen, and Machamp is not paying for anyone’s sins other than his own.
Tl;dr Machamp is inherently unhealthy, adds little to no positives to the metagame and should be banned regardless of the Jirachi situation.
I don’t really mind that Jirachi is the more pressing issue, because to me that’s a much more complicated thing to tackle given its omnipresence in the tier (fueled by iron head paraflinch, sure, but not entirely based on it), and it’s a huge decision that could shake the metagame to its core. Machamp, to me, should be gone regardless of what happens to Jirachi. I think the metagame value associated to Machamp is purely theoretical and exists only within the realm of this ban discussion: I may well be wrong and you could point that out, but I sincerely doubt anyone would use Machamp because it’s a bulky fighter that can kinda check fire move Tyranitar better than Breloom. For the same reason I would instantly vote ban on any sort of statpassing (though I’m opposed to banning drypass), whatever the usage and winrates say, I want Machamp gone too; it’s inherently uncompetitive and unhealthy to the metagame regardless of the frequence with which it comes up or the perceived impact it has on the metagame at large.
Conversely, and following the very same rationale, I agree with the people who want Froslass back in the tier, as it’s a unique hazard setter that could have a legitimate place in the metagame. Let’s be honest for a moment, no one can tell me Abomasnow Froslass hail is even remotely close to being as good as Machamp paraspam, Froslass can’t even boost up and sweep your whole team like other fellow evasion users and is nowhere near as pressing or threatening as machamp. You could say I’m hypocritical for this but I think the upside of having Froslass in the tier to enrich the lead metagame far outweighs the almost inexistent chance of it getting away with evasion robbery in an actual game. With Machamp, it’s exactly the opposite.
Now, that being said, I wouldn’t mind a complex ban of getting rid of the punch or it+no guard or whatever, but I understand why that could be a policy nightmare as it creates a precedent (besides baton pass) for specific complex bans that could result in ultimately making the game less accessible for new players because of the amount of seemingly arbitrary restrictions placed on the mons that are available for use.
I admit there are two fair points that go hand in hand against this line of thinking insofar as it can be argued that Machamp has a legitimate place in the metagame (checking ttar as a breaker), and it could be used in that manner if Jirachi (or iron head) is taken out of the equation. But, as I have already explained, I think Machamp (or at least no guard dpunch) should be gone regardless of what happens to the other fellow.
I also think it’s dumb to say this is a decoy or the council’s way of delaying taking proper action. Simply put, there is NO way that if Machamp gets banned people will stop complaining about Jirachi (or whatever it is people deem broken) and demanding that action be taken because we have all hit ourselves with confusion after the council’s masterplan to divert the attention from the real issue. If people want a Jirachi suspect, it will still happen, and Machamp is not paying for anyone’s sins other than his own.
Tl;dr Machamp is inherently unhealthy, adds little to no positives to the metagame and should be banned regardless of the Jirachi situation.
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This is simply not true. For example, if you switch your Skarmory into CB Dragonite's Outrage, you definitely end up with the favorable outcome at the end of that turn and the Dragonite user is punished for their incorrect prediction. However, Dynamic Punch takes this dynamic out of the window by rewarding what should be an incorrect move: momentum should be reversed when you successfully switch your check into Machamp's resisted moves, but what happens instead is that the Machamp user has 50%+ odds to have a free turn that could potentially decide the game. Also, this seems quite obvious to me, but 1/16 odds for a critical hit and 10% odds for a freeze are not really comparable to 50% self-hit odds.
Indeed, Dynamic Punch wasn't designed to be 100% accurate, as it is a very powerful move that always induces confusion. My preference would have been to ban the move instead of Machamp, as I think it's lame even with 50% accuracy (see how it is used in GSC), but the option presented to us is good enough.
The argument that Machamp should not be banned because it's not an effective enough abuser of an uncompetitive element is one I disagree with, but respect nonetheless. However, it is outrageous to deny the existence of the uncompetitive element altogether. As for the comparison with paralysis: the odds for a self-hit are 50% and the odds for a fp are 25%. If you cannot understand how this difference impacts decision making, you are not in a position to lecture anyone about managing the odds & the nature of probability.
The arguments are just going into circle at this point. I think we can all agree Machamp is not overpowered, broken, and very low usage, pretty simple.
Is it "uncompetitive" in a sense that does Machamp reduce the effect of player choice to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is rendered irrelevant? Is the RNG produced by Machamp "too much"? If a less skill player is using Machamp, does it put a more skilled player at a disadvantage a considerable amount of the time?
Personally, I don't think Machamp is a strong enough mon and needs too much support to be considered uncompetitive. Slow af and frail. There are also enough counterplay to Machamp if you build correctly. But also, it does bullshit hax it way into victory every now and then. Machamp doesn't really make the tier healthier. Won't miss it when it's gone. Ban it or leave it unban, won't really make a difference in the tier let's be honest.
The more pressing problems is that while this DPP suspect have revitalize the community, and brought in a lot of new people, a lot of people seemed to have a miserable time in DPP. DPP already had a bad reputation due to certain vocal minority group, and this suspect test had put the DPP reputation even more in the gutter. Let's have some quote shall we?
We all know Jirachi + Iron Head, Sleep, and Para are the real problem and culprit of this tier. If you truly wants to make DPP great, these are the problems we have to tackle. But due to tiering policy, we can't do anything about it to improve the tier. So we are stuck here arguing for 4 pages over goddamn Machamp, even though banning or not banning it won't really matter or affect the metagame. But I do appreciate the council for trying.
Happy New Year and hopefully in 2025 DPP will be improved further, because it is my favorite tier but it is damn frustrating to play it sometimes.
P/S: unbanned Froslass. Just because Excal shit on some noobs in 1500 elo, that doesn't mean Froslass is broken, Excal can do it with any mons
Is it "uncompetitive" in a sense that does Machamp reduce the effect of player choice to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is rendered irrelevant? Is the RNG produced by Machamp "too much"? If a less skill player is using Machamp, does it put a more skilled player at a disadvantage a considerable amount of the time?
Personally, I don't think Machamp is a strong enough mon and needs too much support to be considered uncompetitive. Slow af and frail. There are also enough counterplay to Machamp if you build correctly. But also, it does bullshit hax it way into victory every now and then. Machamp doesn't really make the tier healthier. Won't miss it when it's gone. Ban it or leave it unban, won't really make a difference in the tier let's be honest.
The more pressing problems is that while this DPP suspect have revitalize the community, and brought in a lot of new people, a lot of people seemed to have a miserable time in DPP. DPP already had a bad reputation due to certain vocal minority group, and this suspect test had put the DPP reputation even more in the gutter. Let's have some quote shall we?
And an epic crash out from Jimothy
We all know Jirachi + Iron Head, Sleep, and Para are the real problem and culprit of this tier. If you truly wants to make DPP great, these are the problems we have to tackle. But due to tiering policy, we can't do anything about it to improve the tier. So we are stuck here arguing for 4 pages over goddamn Machamp, even though banning or not banning it won't really matter or affect the metagame. But I do appreciate the council for trying.
Happy New Year and hopefully in 2025 DPP will be improved further, because it is my favorite tier but it is damn frustrating to play it sometimes.
P/S: unbanned Froslass. Just because Excal shit on some noobs in 1500 elo, that doesn't mean Froslass is broken, Excal can do it with any mons
I started the run 22-0, but then disaster struck so badly that I had to stop playing last night. In the end, though, I made it. Banning Machamp definitely doesn't solve all the problems in the tier, but it's a good starting point.
This is a very interesting point. Playing to win as often as possible is obviously different from playing to stop someone else from winning once. If you're confident you skill gap your opponent you want less variance, if you know you're the underdog you want more.
Restating the obvious here but debating a ban on a Pokémon for increasing the number of coins flipped isn't really about whether or not it's dominant at the highest levels of competitive play. Picking between stay or go I'm not qualified to weigh in on but wanted to leave my 2 cents after seeing people start getting into the weeds over pickrates.
Since the issue seems to lie with 100% Dynamic Punch causing a coin flip, are Machoke and Machop also on the Machopping block?
Hahah, very funny.
I guess, given their similarities. Although using pre-evolutions in OU before Eviolite was a thing isn't viable, at best a match up fish against someone who's undeniably clueless.
The suspect deadline has now passed and the voting period has started. Please vote here: https://www.smogon.com/tools/suspects/view/62
Voting deadline: Sunday, January 5th 6:00 PM GMT-5
Voting deadline: Sunday, January 5th 6:00 PM GMT-5
think it didn't tag everyone so just gonna retag manually:
Void Dridri457 Le Don mind gaming Laurel Malekith twash Pideous Mishimono Luigi Christos SoulWind crucify M Dragon BIHI elodin ABR Fakes Janik SANKE CARP NoName6293 Pkel SweeTforU TyCarter nightcore SFG Groudon Larry false Tizio Potente Ao Kristyl Garay oak johnnyg2 Vulpix03 crayon pop oiponabys Shing DeepBlueC Lazuli Student of Sinnoh We Three Kings BKC Excal
Void Dridri457 Le Don mind gaming Laurel Malekith twash Pideous Mishimono Luigi Christos SoulWind crucify M Dragon BIHI elodin ABR Fakes Janik SANKE CARP NoName6293 Pkel SweeTforU TyCarter nightcore SFG Groudon Larry false Tizio Potente Ao Kristyl Garay oak johnnyg2 Vulpix03 crayon pop oiponabys Shing DeepBlueC Lazuli Student of Sinnoh We Three Kings BKC Excal
Having reached the necessary 26/42 votes for a ban (60%+), Machamp is now banned from DPP OU! For those who haven't voted yet, you have three days to vote before the deadline for your vote to count towards tiering contributor, but any votes from this point on will not change the result. The votes will become public after the deadline has passed.
dhelmise Marty please implement this, thank you!
dhelmise Marty please implement this, thank you!
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