Metagame np: SS DOU Stage 5: One More Time | Marshadow, Shadow Tag Quickbanned

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MajorBowman

MajorBowman

wouldst thou like to live fergaliciously?
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Top Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Top Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Dedicated Tournament Host Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Music's got me feeling so free
We're gonna celebrate
Celebrate and dance so free
One more time ​

The second Sword and Shield DLC, Crown Tundra, is almost upon us! As with Isle of Armor, this means a bevy of previously unincluded Pokemon are about to join the fray. However, the legendary-centric nature of Crown Tundra means that it will almost certainly cause the DOU metagame to change completely. These are the Pokemon that, to the best of our knowledge, will be introduced to Pokemon Sword and Shield when Crown Tundra is released on October 22:

Ea9plwPWkAIckjL-480x183.png

Nidoran♀
Nidorina
Nidoqueen
Nidoran♂
Nidorino
Nidoking
Zubat
Golbat
Electabuzz
Magmar
Dratini
Dragonair
Dragonite
Crobat
Elekid
Magby
Aron
Lairon
Aggron
Swablu
Altaria
Lileep
Cradily
Absol
Spheal
Sealeo
Walrein
Relicanth
Beldum
Metang
Metagross
Gible
Gabite
Garchomp
Electivire
Magmortar
Audino
Cryogonal
Tyrunt
Tyrantrum
Amaura
Aurorus
Carbink
Articuno
Zapdos
Moltres
Raikou
Entei
Suicune
Lugia
Ho-Oh
Regirock
Regice
Registeel
Latias
Latios
Kyogre
Groudon
Rayquaza
Uxie
Mesprit
Azelf
Dialga
Palkia
Heatran
Regigigas
Giratina
Cresselia
Tornadus
Thundurus
Landorus
Xerneas
Yveltal
Zygarde
Tapu Koko
Tapu Lele
Tapu Bulu
Tapu Fini
Nihilego
Buzzwole
Pheromosa
Xurkitree
Celesteela
Kartana
Guzzlord
Poipole
Naganadel
Stakataka
Blacephalon
A lot of the previous titans of DOU are returning, such as Landorus, the Island Guardians, and Diancie. Given the strength of these Pokemon compared to what is currently available, it's hard to say that Crown Tundra won't reshape the entire metagame. The presents a unique tiering challenge for the DOU Council. This is a mostly unprecedented mid-generation event, so we had to think about how we wanted to handle both the returning Pokemon and the current DOU banlist. After some discussion, this is how we have decided to proceed:
  • When Crown Tundra is released on Thursday, October 22, all newly introduced Pokemon will be legal, with the exception of the cover legends that are typically banned by default (see below for a full list)
  • Additionally, all current DOU bans will be lifted, with the exception of Magearna and the cover legends (see below for a full list)
    • This does not apply to clauses; all current clauses will remain in place
      • Yes, this means Dynamax will still be banned
  • After one week, the council will vote on all previously bans and any new introductions that appear to be immediately problematic
    • This will be a simple majority vote; if over 50% of the council votes to ban/re-ban a Pokemon, it will be banned
  • After this week, we will most likely return to the standard suspect test model. A quickban after this period is not out of the question, but will be reserved for a Pokemon that is pretty blatantly obviously unhealthy
This seemed to be the most reasonable way to handle tiering during such an unstable shaking-up of the metagame. We wanted to give all the new Pokemon a chance to exist before locking them up prematurely, but we also understand that something banned in the pre-Crown Tundra metagame may very well be kept in balance much easier after reintroduction of a large group of metagame-defining Pokemon.

For clarity's sake, the Pokemon that will be banned and unbanned upon the release of Crown Tundra are listed below.

Bans:
  • Mewtwo
  • Lugia
  • Ho-oh
  • Kyogre
  • Groudon
  • Rayquaza
  • Dialga
  • Palkia
  • Giratina
  • Reshiram
  • Zekrom
  • Kyurem-W
  • Xerneas
  • Yveltal
  • Magearna
  • Solgaleo
  • Lunala
  • Necrozma-Dusk Mane
  • Necrozma-Dawn Wings
  • Zacian
  • Zamazenta
  • Eternatus
  • Power Construct
Unbans:
  • Jirachi
  • Kyurem-B
  • Volcarona
  • Marshadow
  • Melmetal
  • Urshifu Single Strike
  • Beat Up
These lists will be updated accordingly if it is found out that some Pokemon not previously thought to be returning will be present in Crown Tundra.

Magearna will remain banned because we don't need a week to know that Soul Heart is still ridiculous in doubles formats and including it would likely create too many confounding factors that make evaluating other Pokemon difficult.

This thread will be where all announcements regarding tiering decisions will be posted. This is also the thread that should be used for discussion of the post-Crown Tundra SS DOU metagame. The council would love to hear your input regarding how the new Pokemon will affect the metagame. We're looking forward to this new metagame and the discussion that follows!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE on Wednesday, October 21
We decided to split the voting into three phases. The first phase will be done this Saturday, October 24. This first round of voting is meant to be very conservative; we will only be looking at banning the most blatantly problematic of Pokemon, or what we have affectionately refered to as "Melmetal tier." The goal here is not to eliminate everything after a couple days, but to remove what obviously needs removing so we can more accurately look at the rest of the metagame.

The second phase will be done a week later on Saturday, October 31. During this phase, the council will vote on the newly reintroduced Pokemon listed below and any other new and potentially problematic Pokemon, including everything that was voted on but not banned in phase 1.

The third phase will happen 2 weeks later on Saturday, November 14. The council will vote on the remaining Pokemon, including those that were voted on but not banned in phase 1 or 2. This phase is the most likely to contain votes that were not on the original list, as we will have had ample time to evaluate whether some returning or new Pokemon are potentially unhealthy. For example (and this is just a random example), if Regidrago turns out to be problematic, it would likely be voted out during this phase after we've seen it in action for 3 weeks and change.

The ban threshold for all three of these votes will be 50%.

We decided to split it up like this because one week to fully evaluate the status of multiple Pokemon at once seemed like it was rushing the process a bit, but we wanted to do an earlier vote as well because there will very likely be some Pokemon that will be obviously unhealthy and don't require a longer test period.

In addition, we have decided to add Swagger to the list of elements on which we will be voting, largely because Swagger is known to have unhealthy interactions with some returning Pokemon (notably Marshadow and Tapu Fini). We also reserve the right to add anything else to the voting slate throughout the process; trying to include everything that might be potentially broken right off the bat is solely based in speculation and would likely lead to an overinflated list and possibly some incorrect bans.

As it currently stands, the following is the list of elements that will be voted on during each phase of voting. If something is banned in any phase, it will be removed from the remaining votes. This is not a complete list and may grow as we learn more about the Crown Tundra metagame.
  • Jirachi
  • Kyurem-B
  • Volcarona
  • Marshadow
  • Melmetal
  • Urshifu Single Strike
  • Beat Up
  • Swagger
We will be watching (and participating in, of course) the discussion both in this thread and on discord, so please use both actively!

Looking forward to Crown Tundra, hope yall are too!
 
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Quick update:

We decided to split the voting into three phases. The first phase will be done this Saturday, October 24. This first round of voting is meant to be very conservative; we will only be looking at banning the most blatantly problematic of Pokemon, or what we have affectionately refered to as "Melmetal tier." The goal here is not to eliminate everything after a couple days, but to remove what obviously needs removing so we can more accurately look at the rest of the metagame.

The second phase will be done a week later on Saturday, October 31. During this phase, the council will vote on the newly reintroduced Pokemon listed below and any other new and potentially problematic Pokemon, including everything that was voted on but not banned in phase 1.

The third phase will happen 2 weeks later on Saturday, November 14. The council will vote on the remaining Pokemon, including those that were voted on but not banned in phase 1 or 2. This phase is the most likely to contain votes that were not on the original list, as we will have had ample time to evaluate whether some returning or new Pokemon are potentially unhealthy. For example (and this is just a random example), if Regidrago turns out to be problematic, it would likely be voted out during this phase after we've seen it in action for 3 weeks and change.

The ban threshold for all three of these votes will be 50%.

We decided to split it up like this because one week to fully evaluate the status of multiple Pokemon at once seemed like it was rushing the process a bit, but we wanted to do an earlier vote as well because there will very likely be some Pokemon that will be obviously unhealthy and don't require a longer test period.

In addition, we have decided to add Swagger to the list of elements on which we will be voting, largely because Swagger is known to have unhealthy interactions with some returning Pokemon (notably Marshadow and Tapu Fini). We also reserve the right to add anything else to the voting slate throughout the process; trying to include everything that might be potentially broken right off the bat is solely based in speculation and would likely lead to an overinflated list and possibly some incorrect bans.

As it currently stands, the following is the list of elements that will be voted on during each phase of voting. If something is banned in any phase, it will be removed from the remaining votes. This is not a complete list and may grow as we learn more about the Crown Tundra metagame.
  • Jirachi
  • Kyurem-B
  • Volcarona
  • Marshadow
  • Melmetal
  • Urshifu Single Strike
  • Beat Up
  • Swagger
We will be watching (and participating in, of course) the discussion both in this thread and on discord, so please use both actively!

Looking forward to Crown Tundra, hope yall are too!
 
MajorBowman said:
Quick update:

We decided to split the voting into three phases. The first phase will be done this Saturday, October 24. This first round of voting is meant to be very conservative; we will only be looking at banning the most blatantly problematic of Pokemon, or what we have affectionately refered to as "Melmetal tier." The goal here is not to eliminate everything after a couple days, but to remove what obviously needs removing so we can more accurately look at the rest of the metagame.

The second phase will be done a week later on Saturday, October 31. During this phase, the council will vote on the newly reintroduced Pokemon listed below and any other new and potentially problematic Pokemon, including everything that was voted on but not banned in phase 1.

The third phase will happen 2 weeks later on Saturday, November 14. The council will vote on the remaining Pokemon, including those that were voted on but not banned in phase 1 or 2. This phase is the most likely to contain votes that were not on the original list, as we will have had ample time to evaluate whether some returning or new Pokemon are potentially unhealthy. For example (and this is just a random example), if Regidrago turns out to be problematic, it would likely be voted out during this phase after we've seen it in action for 3 weeks and change.

The ban threshold for all three of these votes will be 50%.

We decided to split it up like this because one week to fully evaluate the status of multiple Pokemon at once seemed like it was rushing the process a bit, but we wanted to do an earlier vote as well because there will very likely be some Pokemon that will be obviously unhealthy and don't require a longer test period.

In addition, we have decided to add Swagger to the list of elements on which we will be voting, largely because Swagger is known to have unhealthy interactions with some returning Pokemon (notably Marshadow and Tapu Fini). We also reserve the right to add anything else to the voting slate throughout the process; trying to include everything that might be potentially broken right off the bat is solely based in speculation and would likely lead to an overinflated list and possibly some incorrect bans.

As it currently stands, the following is the list of elements that will be voted on during each phase of voting. If something is banned in any phase, it will be removed from the remaining votes. This is not a complete list and may grow as we learn more about the Crown Tundra metagame.
  • Jirachi
  • Kyurem-B
  • Volcarona
  • Marshadow
  • Melmetal
  • Urshifu Single Strike
  • Beat Up
  • Swagger
We will be watching (and participating in, of course) the discussion both in this thread and on discord, so please use both actively!

Looking forward to Crown Tundra, hope yall are too!
Click to expand...

I feel this is a generally good process. However, I wonder why 50% was chosen as the ban threshold?

This seems quite low for this type of voting. My reasons being:
  • The Smogon norm is 60%. 50% seems to be the norm when the Pokemon was previous banned and the test is to unban it (the status quo), which I think is why this was chosen. However, I feel this is inappropriate, given the huge metagame change, which would warrant resetting the status quo to unban.
  • The multiple testing problem. This is a statistical term that means if you test something more than once, you are more likely to have a statistically significant result (in this case, this is analogous to a ban). We're testing a group of things 3 times, so we're more likely to see a 'ban vote'. In statistical testing, this problem is often remedied by raising the threshold required for statistical testing for each test (statistcal method examples), with the overall likelihood of at least one statistical result across the tests being the desired statistical threshold. In statistics, the threshold is often 0.05 (5% chance), and three tests would have a threshold of about 0.02 (2%) chance. For Smogon ban testing, this would be equivalent to a higher threshold required for a ban. In this case, we have actually lowered the threshold from 60% to 50% for each test, resulting in a relatively higher chance of a ban at each test, and thus a overall high chance of a ban across the 3 tests.
  • The first and second test (especially the first) seem addressed at quickly identifying Pokemon that are obviously broken, with the third test also allowing for banning without a community suspect test but with having more time to analyse each suspect and thus more easily detect cases that are not so obviously broken. But I'd imagine that Pokemon that are obviously broken would have a fairly high ban vote rate in a vote; Melmetal had a 95% ban vote rate for example. A ban vote rate of 50% would suggest the Pokemon is not obviously broken (considered broken by a majority of people, but not obviously broken where a large majority of people consider it broken). Given the short time for tests 1 and 2, the information for deciding on ban/not ban for each suspect is limited, and thus I feel the decision to be ban should require a higher degree of clarity with the limited information (i.e. a higher ban vote required, instead of a lesser one of 50%).
Overall, I feel that a 50% chance across 3 tests in a short time period seems quite low compared to the norm and that the circumstances of the testing would suggest a higher threshold is more appropriate.
 
Council votes have always had a threshold of 50%, not 60%, so we weren't trying to change something up here. I'm still open to raising the threshold, but in discussion we haven't found enough reason to necessitate that shift.

Also, I don't think I'm convinced by your argument about the multiple testing problem -- the voting slate will be different in each of the three votes because there will likely be multiple highly impactful Pokemon gone from the meta each time. It's not like we're re-voting because the original vote didn't pass and we wanted to rectify that, the meta is so different that it's practically like an all-new vote every time.

These first and second votes especially are about which things need to be swiftly ejected from the meta, so if more than half the council believes that it isn't even worth giving something a shot then I personally don't see it as circumventing the normal 60%.
 
:kyurem-black: :jirachi: :marshadow: :melmetal: :gothitelle: :incineroar: (click me!)

I've sure others have figured out this extremely good group of six Pokemon. I call it: "Use 5 brokens and win every game"

Replays:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1207717348
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1207727672

Jirachi, Marshadow, and Melmetal are clearly broken to me and shouldn't last through the first voting stage. I am actually interested in how Kyub, Volcarona, and Darkshifu are in slightly healthier meta, so I think these can all stay (for now). The combination Kyurem-Black + Jirachi is too strong for the tier, but I wonder how the former is by itself.

I'm worried how much Shadow Tag will affect our initial impressions of some of the strongest Pokemon in the tier. I have no doubts that Urshifu + Gothitelle is broken, but what about Urshifu without the trapping suppport? People have been asking to ban Gothitelle even before DLC 2 dropped, and I fear it's going to be even more broken with better Pokemon to support.

I have not tried Beat Up or Swagger but I'm sure they're as dumb as ever!
 
Honestly as far as I see, Jirachi, Swaggar, and ofc Shadow Tag need to gtfo. Everything else seems rather doable to me tbh.
Without that bullsh*t in the meta, I feel like it would drastically tone down a lot of things running train currently. Would personally like to see how things shape up with those elements removed (ESPECIALLY STag) as I don’t see anything bar maybe Marshadow being too egregious or overly difficult to deal with by normal means
 
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Does anyone know how Neutralizing Gas works on Slow Start?
I’m pretty sure slow start is neutralized, like any other ability, but what happens when Weezing-G dies or switches out?
Does the timer restart, does it start off from where it was, or something?
 
My Initial thoughts on everything:

Melmetal: Relatively tame so long as you plan for it. It definitely hits extremely hard, but frankly I haven’t had a ton of issues dealing with it. While it does exert a ludicrous amount of offensive pressure, many many more things can just slap it now that it can’t just run over everything in sight. I honestly feel like it should get a fair shot here and let things settle down around it

Saitama: A royal pain in the ass, but it does just drop to alot more things we have access to now and we have a beve of threats to decently keep up with it. Wicked Blow is still gunna do Wicked Blow shit, but you have to actually use your brain for a bit before mindlessly spamming it unlike before

Volcarona: It’s not a big deal. It can stay. ‘Nuff said

Jirachi: Actually stupid. Get this thing outta here IMMEDIATELY

Marshadow: Pretty damn dumb, but not as dumb as I’d have thought. Doesn’t have much bulk and can be muscled through if played well. But having basically zero safe switch-ins, essentially unresisted STAB combos, Spectral f*cking Thief, and ludicrously strong priority is definitely a real bitch to deal with

KyuB: Probably the most fun and most abusable mon outside of Rachi (plz ban). I feel like DD sets aren’t that hard to deal with in practice once you know its DD, which seems to be most common. Its random sub, AV, and just all-out attacking sets that’ll catch you. I feel like the sheer versatility of this Pokemon coupled with Teravolt, very respectable bulk, and ludicrous offensive stats are what truly makes it oppressive. However I don’t feel its anywhere close to as busted as it may seem when Jirachi isn’t sitting next to it or Goth isn’t just deleting all your checks for free. I feel like if we got rid of those things, we’d get a crystal clear image of just how good KyuB is. But personally I feel it has a place here

Beat Up: I haven’t actually played this yet. But without Max, I feel this strat lost a huge chunk of its luster. But I won’t ramble on what I don’t know

Overall, I feel like these Pokémon that aren’t Rachi aren’t THAT bad on their own if some of the more degenerate shit around them isn’t present. But this is what I’ve experienced so far [:

Also, free Ice Rider
 
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honestly everything is so broken now you can probably ban nothing at all, like the power level is insane, but it still feels like all the different broken things have some room to breathe. We might find that in time one strategy is tier 0 (you are putting yourself at a disadvantage by not using it) but for now I really don't think that's the case. If a mon or pair runs all over your team its probably more reflective of the fact that you are using a day 1 team.
 
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Wanted to preface this by saying I've never been the biggest doubles player but I played it sporadically in gen7 and picked it up this gen, played a lot during IoA and have played about 10-15 games with GreenGogoatttt's team. I just wanted to give my thoughts, which is that Gothitelle and Jirachi warp the meta a lot and provide too much support to all the big threats in the meta. It's impossible imo to tell whats good and whats broken because half the meta is broken standing next to Jirachi or Goth. I think they need to be the first to go so we can get a fair picture of everything else.
 
spookysocialist said:
Wanted to preface this by saying I've never been the biggest doubles player but I played it sporadically in gen7 and picked it up this gen, played a lot during IoA and have played about 10-15 games with GreenGogoatttt's team. I just wanted to give my thoughts, which is that Gothitelle and Jirachi warp the meta a lot and provide too much support to all the big threats in the meta. It's impossible imo to tell whats good and whats broken because half the meta is broken standing next to Jirachi or Goth. I think they need to be the first to go so we can get a fair picture of everything else.
Click to expand...

100% Agreed on this
 
Definitely not a metagame-breaking mechanic or anything, but because Regieleki is so naturally fast, it's trivial to reach 1809 Speed stat or higher which causes you to move first in Trick Room. With a starting Speed stat of 453 or higher, +2 Speed from 1 Agility, and Tailwind (or +6 Speed from 3 Agility), your Speed will shoot past the 1809 mark and allow Regieleki to move first in TR. You can see an example of someone showcasing this with level 50 numbers here:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1319994305965101059

Electro Ball doesn't have those sorts of overflows occur when it calculates its base power, so such a Speed stat "ignoring" Trick Room wouldn't prevent Regieleki from having 150 BP Electro Ball.

If you're curious why this happens: for the purposes of Speed sorting, a Pokemon cannot have higher than 10000 Speed, and it also cannot have a Speed stat higher than a 13-bit unsigned integer (so the max Speed you could have in turn order is 8191). All Trick Room does when it calculates Speed is take 10000 - Speed, and this is before the 13-bit restriction is applied. With this in mind, if you look at a regular Pokemon, say, one with 200 Speed, what the game does is 10000 - 200 = 9800, and then because the number is greater than 8191, it drops the leading bit (subtracts 8192) to make it fit. So such a Pokemon in Trick Room really has 1608 Speed. If Regieleki reaches a stat 1809 or higher, however, it doesn't need to drop that leading bit, because the number already fits. For example, if Regieleki has 1812 Speed, 10000 - 1812 = 8188 which is well under the 8191 limitation. Thus, Regieleki will move first in the turn over the 200 Speed Pokemon, because 8188 > 1608. If none of this paragraph made sense, you can watch my collaboration with Wolfe Glick to get a simplified version of what's going on.
 
The DOU Council just completed the first slate of voting, where 5/9 votes was enough to send something to DUbers.

Jirachi: 6 DUbers / 3 DOU
Kyurem-Black: 0 DUbers / 9 DOU
Marshadow: 1 DUbers / 8 DOU
Melmetal: 9 DUbers / 0 DOU
Urshifu-Single-Strike: 6 DUbers / 3 DOU
Volcarona: 0 DUbers / 9 DOU
Beat Up: 0 DUbers / 9 DOU
Swagger: 9 DUbers / 0 DOU

As a result, Jirachi, Melmetal, Urshifu-Single-Strike, and Swagger are now BANNED from SS DOU. Tagging Marty and DaWoblefet to implement this on PS!

Each member's votes can be seen here:
d5b4c03691.png
 
Double-posting here with the results of the second slate! Once again, 5/9 votes is enough to send something to DUbers. This time around, we added Shadow Tag to the slate as it's been regarded as problematic for a long time. Other additional Pokemon, like Diancie and anything else that may appear as broken, will be added to the third slate in two weeks.

Kyurem-Black: 0 DUbers / 9 DOU
Marshadow: 9 DUbers / 0 DOU
Volcarona: 0 DUbers / 9 DOU
Beat Up: 0 DUbers / 9 DOU
Shadow Tag: 8 DUbers / 1 DOU

57fc76a532.png


As a result, Marshadow and Shadow Tag are now BANNED from SS DOU. Tagging Marty and DaWoblefet to implement these changes on PS!
 
talkingtree said:
Double-posting here with the results of the second slate! Once again, 5/9 votes is enough to send something to DUbers. This time around, we added Shadow Tag to the slate as it's been regarded as problematic for a long time. Other additional Pokemon, like Diancie and anything else that may appear as broken, will be added to the third slate in two weeks.

Kyurem-Black: 0 DUbers / 9 DOU
Marshadow: 9 DUbers / 0 DOU
Volcarona: 0 DUbers / 9 DOU
Beat Up: 0 DUbers / 9 DOU
Shadow Tag: 8 DUbers / 1 DOU

57fc76a532.png


As a result, Marshadow and Shadow Tag are now BANNED from SS DOU. Tagging Marty and DaWoblefet to implement these changes on PS!
Click to expand...

Let's freaking go
 
Hot off the mechanics research press: Diamond Storm has been nerfed to behave normally now. Rather than roll a +2 for each successful target of Diamond Storm like in previous generations, Diamond Storm now can only ever give you a single +2 Defense boost for successfully hitting either target. Testing in-game when Diamond Storm successfully hit 2 targets:

18/29 Diamond Storm gave a single +2 boost
11/29 Diamond Storm did not give any Defense boosts

^remember, this isn't counting hitting 1 and missing 1, hitting 1 and hitting Protect, etc.

If Diamond Storm did have the potential to roll a boost on both targets, it would have a 25% chance to do so; since it did not out of about 30 tests, I think it's safe to say it can't boost twice anymore. According to the SwSh internal move data from 1.3, Diamond Storm really does have a 50% chance to boost Defense by 2, so I wouldn't worry about any discrepancy between 18 vs. 11 not being 50/50, that's just the luck of the draw.

EDIT: You can mostly ignore the numbers above; a Serene Grace Diamond Storm only boosted Def one time which proves it only has one roll. I did a few more anyway, here are the totals

26/46 Diamond Storm gave a single +2 boost
20/46 Diamond Storm did not give any Defense boosts

Also by the way, Diamond Storm behaves the same way in Gen 7. So we played that tier for 3 years without getting Diamond Storm right ROFL. Gen 6 behaves like how we traditionally understood Diamond Storm.
 
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A quick update from the council: We don't believe there is anything that would be potentially ban-worthy for the 3rd slate planned for this Saturday. Diancie was something that had originally been pegged as a very likely candidate to go, but with the new mechanics info from DaWoblefet, acting on it now would be premature. It's still possible that Diancie will be an issue in the future, but with there being nothing that council feels is in need of a quickban vote now, we're going to hold off and return to normal metagame development, with public suspects instead of council votes.
 
Thanks. I need this suspect to get my badge back. But also I think we should suspect Goth bc we have played with it for 3 and a half gens and while it was good it was never voted ban by suspect. If anything it seems like dlc should make it worse we have new Uturners and Volt switchers. I'd probably support the ban but think it's premature to ban something that was never banned before so quickly, give it a proper suspect
 
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n1n1 said:
Thanks. I need this suspect to get my badge back. But also I think we should suspect Goth bc we have played with it for 3 and a half gens and while it was good it was never voted ban by suspect. If anything it seems like dlc should make it worse we have new Uturners and Volt switchers. I'd probably support the ban but think it's premature to ban something that was never banned before so quickly, give it a proper suspect
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Goth is still legal, you just can't use Shadow Tag as its ability :)

I know what you meant though, and I think quickbanning Shadow Tag was a good decision. People had been clamouring for STAG to be gone for a long time, both in SS and SM.

I think STAG got a bit stronger in SS, if only because its two best users (Gothitelle and Eviolite Gothirita) both learned Fake Out in SS. The role compression of Fake Out + trapping pushed the Goths over the edge imo, giving them something less passive to click in a battle. It's true that we have more Volt/Turn users now, but the slower ones like Rillaboom and Incineroar can still be trapped in long enough to get taken out by a faster threat so Volt/Turn doesn't fully solve what makes STAG problematic. Also, I'd argue that a lot of faster attackers like Koko, even though they learn Volt/Turn, don't always want to run it. With STAG in the meta, they feel more forced to run Volt/Turn, even if something else like Taunt is otherwise the best 3rd move to support their team.

If anything, I would sooner buy into a STAG suspect in SM before trying to unban it in SS, although that's not my hill to die on by any means. This is all just my opinion.
 
Most of the posts with opinions the state of the meta pre the first (and also second) DLC quickbans were that Shadow Tag was potentially problematic. And that was when Shadow Tag wasn't even on the initial voting list. Indeed there were multiple posts stating that Shadow Tag and Jirachi had a large inflluence of whether other things were broken or not.

Given the large influence of ST, I feel that a quickban was warranted.

At the same time, I do feel a suspect test is warranted. Not because the quickban was a bad move, but to have better assessment of what it's like without other potentially broken influencers like Marshadow (that can strongly shape the metagame alone) for something that has been allowed in DOU since forever. It seems premature to definitely assume it's broken on the basis of a metagame that was 1 week old with these broken influencers without formal testing when it has, again, being allowed since DOU's creation. There was talk of it being banworthy in the Isle of Armor, but this was never tested, and I still feel that a permaban would be premature in view of this.

It also feels like a test to do earlier than later, since the outcome could potentially greatly shape the outcome of other future suspect tests.

I think STAG got a bit stronger in SS, if only because its two best users (Gothitelle and Eviolite Gothirita) both learned Fake Out in SS. The role compression of Fake Out + trapping pushed the Goths over the edge imo, giving them something less passive to click in a battle. It's true that we have more Volt/Turn users now, but the slower ones like Rillaboom and Incineroar can still be trapped in long enough to get taken out by a faster threat so Volt/Turn doesn't fully solve what makes STAG problematic. Also, I'd argue that a lot of faster attackers like Koko, even though they learn Volt/Turn, don't always want to run it. With STAG in the meta, they feel more forced to run Volt/Turn, even if something else like Taunt is otherwise the best 3rd move to support their team.
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This also applied to pre Crown Tundra 8th gen. I do also feel it's somewhat difficult to make discussions like these changes occurred in 8th DLC since we're still adptating. The Volt/Turn option also doesn't convince me since Volt/Turn are still good moves - this isn't greatly making the team worse because of Shadow Tag. Regarding the slower Volt/turn users, I could argue that the power level of this metagame is decreased from 7th gen due to the loss of Z-moves and terrain nerf. This makes it harder for Goth's partner to have the power to grab quick KOs wth ST support or provide more offensive pressure to make up for Goth's lack of offensive pressure.
 
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