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Just a reminder that UU banned Agility+Wrap. Yes, technically that is not a ban of a specific move on a specific Pokemon because not only Dragonite gets that combination (lol) but it is pretty clear that effectively it is the same. Not saying I think banning Hypnosis on Hypno is the way to go but at least we have to make ourselves honest.
Speaking of it, clean slate sounds alrightish. Especially if that means reversing the AgiliWrap ban. I don't understand why UU should include OU-Pokemon, though. Victreebel, Jolteon and Slowbro are deemed OU by the OU community, no?
This is based on the premise that they remain in C1 again and do not randomly get elevated to OU again, when in prior years C = drop, B = in the tier. Not just poaching those mons, but rather "if OU drops them, as they are supposed to with C ranks"
I think fixing the tier can be made by unbanning AgiliWrap first (as a formality). Then ban a number of problematic Pokemon. Why not ban Lapras, Hypno, Articuno, Dragonite, Tentacruel. That seems like a good base of Pokemon that are too much for UU for different reasons. I read a lot of complaints about physical attackers. Why not ban Kangaskhan and Persian too?
Sure, it will result in a rather large BL but why is that not an option?
I think banning like 7 Pokemon over banning one move that is problematic on multiple Pokemon seems like going in the wrong direction, that is half of a tier's worth of Pokemon already
I think banning like 7 Pokemon over banning one move that is problematic on multiple Pokemon seems like going in the wrong direction, that is half of a tier's worth of Pokemon already
Are you talking about the move Wrap?
I think multiple people here have stated (and I agree) that banning the move does not create a better metagame.
Yea. 7 Pokemon is a lot but they are all pretty busted compared to the general power level of UU. I have never had a problem with the UU that I played back then (pre AgiliWrap ban). All those Pokemon were busted then but the game was playable and imo enjoyable. But I can still see that people find things busted. But if one comes to a different conclusion (i.e. the tier is not good with no bans) then I think all of theese Pokemon can reasonably be argued to be banned. Even more, banning only one or two of them is more difficult to argue because they are relatively close in therms of "banworthyness".
Hypno is not a good defensive answer to crit-heavy physical attackers at all, I don't know what this is about. It's a check to special attackers but switch it into any of the 3 you mentioned and see what happens, or have it 1v1 Dodrio or Kang. We have strong defensive pieces in current uu with very good bulk like Gyarados, Dragonite, Golem, Vaporeon, but what do the first 3 all share in common? Getting owned by Tentacruel, except Vaporeon, which is also by far the most passive one.
Yeah that is not how you play Hypno in UU. If you're switching it into a slam that's on the player. I was not arguing its capabilities in 1v1 but its defensive ability is in helping neutralise the heavy hitters with status and spc drops.
It is precisely this fact that it often ends up fighting the phys attackers...
Difficulty switching into Kang, Persian, Dodrio? Pick any mon in this tier, even some you included in your list and I could argue the same thing. The pivot capabilities of Golem on normal attacks such as HBeam etc are relevant. The general notion barely is here. All of Gyarados, Vaporeon and Hypno are 3hko'd by Persians Slash. Gyara and Vap are 4hko by Kangaskhans Slam. Hypno is 33% chance to 3hko. And each and every one of them fall to hbeam after switching into a crit Slam anyways. There isn't a ton of difference here. The only notable one is Dodrios body slam is a near guaranteed 3hko on Hypno and 4hko on Vap/Gyara. Hypno is powerful because unlike Kadabra it can stay in vs them and fire off a twave, even against multiple of them (It takes around a third off slam) and also packs an extremely powerful STAB Psychic. It can also tank hbeams unlike Kadabra and can run counter to punish.
But anyway, you then went on to admit that Hypno should not have been banned so idk what the argument is here.
I think most people would agree banning Articuno was a good change given the state of the tier, and that's the first suspect to happen under my tenure.
You've pinged me saying this twice today now and I am unsure why. My criticism of the constant change in RBY UU was levelled at the masses not just the Council/LT leader. I myself voted to ban Cuno because of restrictions it placed on the builder. Allow Hypno and/or Lapras and this may change. Every change I listed is not a personal seal of disapproval, just summation and criticism of the merry-go-round culture this tier has seemingly been on for an extended period of time.
I agree with this, but I figure it cannot hurt to start polling about people's general thoughts from right now. I'm not suggesting that we immediately do a suspect with an OU VR approaching fast anyway. The only tournament going on before SPL ends is the current ALTPL I believe, which is already into week 3/5 of regular season, so I think we can simply wait and see, or use the UU ladder as an additional testing ground for this metagame and hope that the OU VR pans out and doesn't randomly designate C1 as OU again.
If we are only polling thoughts now and many people are warm to the idea of C+ or something close to it becoming the standard may I ask why UU was made Wrapless in ALTPL? I don't recall seeing a Pulse, or any official discussion being proposed for this prior to the tour. I have no idea where the decision for that lay; be it with the hosts or the Council but it was the reason I did not sign up for that tournament as I had aspirations to play UU
Just a reminder that UU banned Agility+Wrap. Yes, technically that is not a ban of a specific move on a specific Pokemon because not only Dragonite gets that combination (lol) but it is pretty clear that effectively it is the same. Not saying I think banning Hypnosis on Hypno is the way to go but at least we have to make ourselves honest.
Great point by Lusch, there is past precedent for this. If it improves the tier then why not do it? It seems to me that this is all part of the beginning a wider crusade against Wrap specifically across all tiers, and people had to shoehorn in Clamp, Fire Spin and Bind to avoid being hit with the same argument you provided as to why we couldnt ban Hypnosis on Hypno; that we cannot ban a specific move on a specific mon. There is not a single oppressive Fire Spin, Bind or Clamp user in UU. So can we drop the charade and admit this is purely about wanting Tentacruels wrap gone
If we are only polling thoughts now and many people are warm to the idea of C+ or something close to it becoming the standard may I ask why UU was made Wrapless in ALTPL? I don't recall seeing a Pulse, or any official discussion being proposed for this prior to the tour. I have no idea where the decision for that lay; be it with the hosts or the Council but it was the reason I did not sign up for that tournament as I had aspirations to play UU
You are not going to get most of your predictions right when using partial trapping. Is your opponent going to switch out after 1 turn of wrapping? 2? 4? Will your opponent switch out after that many turns of you using wrap? Predictions based around partial trapping pivots are as far removed from skill based as you can get. Losing the game off of getting a prediction wrong is already a reductive idea, even more so with predictions that are closer to playing rock paper scissors than ones grounded in actual in-game positioning.
If you are in a position where you are going to lose off a single missed prediction then you messed up positionally beforehand and deservedly should lose if you don't predict correctly, which is a good thing. Furthermore, since the distribution is heavily skewed towards 2 or 3 turn wraps, in practice the difficulty of predicting when they are going to switch out is much lower than you say it will be.
Furthermore, incase you haven't noticed, we don't have any other ways to position at all — I would like more ways to position defensively but this is literally all we have unless either OU decides to start dropping stuff like Slowbro (in which case I'd be fine with tiering from a mostly blank slate bar some stupid things like APT) — or we ban the offensive juggernauts in the tier like Kangaskhan, which from ALTPL we know are still making defensive mons unviable even without Wrap. If Wrap still is a problem in either of those cases, then it could be looked at (even though I heavily disagree with looking at it).
This is the one post here that elaborates on Tentacruel's effect on the tier in practice and I agree with it, and would like to expand on this point. RBY UU is full of strong, fast attackers with few overlapping checks, and mercifully, Tentacruel relies on water STAB to do most of it's damage, so Gyarados, Vaporeon and Dewgong would theoretically do a good job of trading with it, Vaporeon possibly even setting up on it. Wrap instead gives the fast powerful attacker the option to turn it's actual defensive checks into free switches. It's worsens the drought of defensive play this tier already has.
Yes, Tentacruel doesn't solely function by trading with the thing that switches into it, the ability to position outside of just trading is a good thing when that is how literally everything else functions in the tier which already doesn't have enough defensive checks to the broken offensive threats and relies on just trading to answer stuff your opponent runs. Furthermore, by forcing Tentacruel to use Wrap, then you are completely gutting it's damage output and forcing it to rely on the low damage output of Wrap to get anything done while also forcing the Tentacruel to predict correctly if they want to retain the advantage and if they get it wrong then they are very far behind and will almost certainly lose — due to the difficulty of getting Tentacruel onto the field.
OU does not care about the OU cutoff for obvious reasons, the OU cutoff (and every other cutoff) is something lowtiers decide for themselves. Placing that cutoff differently does not make lowtiers any less or any more official than they currently are, and it probably will make them better
It feels completely against tiering doctrine to have lower tiers decide the cutoff rather than the tier above them. If OU really doesn't want to decide the cutoff, then we could change back to the "C-rank is the cutoff" approach (even though I'd prefer another option to improve the accuracy of information presented in the VR but I digress).
just posting to bring up the elephant in the room that hasnt been mentioned in this convo yet, showdown pt is completely different from the actual cartridge moves, and pt shouldnt be tiered based on some hypothetical future in which the moves get fixed, if or when that happens then we can revisit them but the decisions in the present need to be based on what we actually have.
showdown pt is a far bigger departure from cartridge than showdown counter which is already p egregious, also the thing that people argue is beneficial to gameplay about pt is precisely the aspect that is a complete departure from cart. (on showdown if u wrap twice then u are still in a very favorable position bc you know whether the move ended but opp doesnt, and 2/3 of the time it hasnt yet which means its not rly favorable for them to just always stay in and try to hit hoping for the 1/3. this fact shapes all pivoting interactions bc on showdown u can wrap a second time to cover switches with little to no risk.)
Reminder that I already have a branch of PS (here) that (from the last I tested it) is able to properly account for this. I haven't checked if it has broken due to changes in PS from the last time I modified it, but if it still works right then once someone reviews it (I asked for someone to do so but I haven't gotten a response from them) then I can make the pull request to main for this to get fixed.
You've pinged me saying this twice today now and I am unsure why. My criticism of the constant change in RBY UU was levelled at the masses not just the Council/LT leader. I myself voted to ban Cuno because of restrictions it placed on the builder. Allow Hypno and/or Lapras and this may change. Every change I listed is not a personal seal of disapproval, just summation and criticism of the merry-go-round culture this tier has seemingly been on for an extended period of time.
Speaking as a council member myself, the main reason all of these suspects are going on is because we are trying to best listen to what the majority of the playerbase wants (we aren't elected as council members so it feels wrong to just completely ignore a large majority of the playerbase complaining about something). I do agree a more stable UU is the goal and am trying to help the tier get to a more stable spot, but we don't really have the option of just doing nothing if the playerbase demands something.
Great point by Lusch, there is past precedent for this. If it improves the tier then why not do it? It seems to me that this is all part of the beginning a wider crusade against Wrap specifically across all tiers, and people had to shoehorn in Clamp, Fire Spin and Bind to avoid being hit with the same argument you provided as to why we couldnt ban Hypnosis on Hypno; that we cannot ban a specific move on a specific mon. There is not a single oppressive Fire Spin, Bind or Clamp user in UU. So can we drop the charade and admit this is purely about wanting Tentacruels wrap gone
The APT ban is based on faulty tiering to an extent and very exceptional because Agility + Partial Trapping literally has no counterplay except "make sure all 6 of your Pokemon have a status move (Toxic/Twave) or sit and wait 32 turns to get to play again" and it's a general ban that also affects things like Moltres that otherwise can feasibly use APT. Banning specifically "Wrap on Tentacruel" or "Hypnosis on Hypno" is a nonstarter. I am not an APT defender but saying "we've done a complex ban before so let's do more of them" is very silly.
Clamp/Fire Spin/Bind were not shoehorned in, first of all Clamp is not even mentioned in the survey except specifically when asking if people feel all PT should be banned regardless of user or if we should ban the specific moves being used the most. There is a very obvious reason for this that people seem to miss: if we deem the entire mechanic of partial trapping as uncompetitive, then it does not matter how bad the user is. We still do not allow Cubone to use Fissure, even though Cubone would obviously still be irrelevant in UU with Fissure. If we say partial trapping is broken, we are saying a specific user or users make it too powerful; if it was just 1 user, we'd ban the user, and if it's multiple, we'd ban the move. It is also possible for Wrap to be broken or uncompetitive while the others aren't because of worse PP and accuracy - that is not an unreasonable opinion to have. That is why I polled on all 3 moves to see what the playerbase's thoughts are, and I'm confused why you keep bringing up the mention of Clamp as some kind of proof of this being a crusade instead of comprehensively surveying the playerbase re: what should be done with partial trapping and why.
I personally think that at the very least all of Wrap, Fire Spin, and Bind have strong arguments for being uncompetitive as a whole thanks to the combination of PP, luck reliance, and most of the Pokemon with these moves having access to status moves and/or Agility; Clamp could be argued to be fine on the basis of 16 PP and being a signature on a mon with neither Agility nor status moves, but that's irrelevant for UU anyway.
fwiw i just wanna throw in i believe altpl's meta vs the current uu's meta isn't a worse meta to me. but i think lapras genuinely fixes the uu meta when wrap isn't present (more so than hypno does, although hypno seems fair to me as well).
amaranth also seemed to already state that a c+ like meta (including lacking wrap) could be good. so it's not really about if uu vs altpl meta is better when this also opens the door more to unbanning the uubl mons. they were banned because wrap's presence made them being the top mons toxic and no sleep buffed both of them imo so we already have 2 bans caused by wrap basically. (3 if we wanna count articuno's ban as a consequence of lapras' ban)
The APT ban is based on faulty tiering to an extent and very exceptional because Agility + Partial Trapping literally has no counterplay except "make sure all 6 of your Pokemon have a status move (Toxic/Twave) or sit and wait 32 turns to get to play again" and it's a general ban that also affects things like Moltres that otherwise can feasibly use APT. Banning specifically "Wrap on Tentacruel" or "Hypnosis on Hypno" is a nonstarter. I am not an APT defender but saying "we've done a complex ban before so let's do more of them" is very silly.
Clamp/Fire Spin/Bind were not shoehorned in, first of all Clamp is not even mentioned in the survey except specifically when asking if people feel all PT should be banned regardless of user or if we should ban the specific moves being used the most. There is a very obvious reason for this that people seem to miss: if we deem the entire mechanic of partial trapping as uncompetitive, then it does not matter how bad the user is. We still do not allow Cubone to use Fissure, even though Cubone would obviously still be irrelevant in UU with Fissure. If we say partial trapping is broken, we are saying a specific user or users make it too powerful; if it was just 1 user, we'd ban the user, and if it's multiple, we'd ban the move. It is also possible for Wrap to be broken or uncompetitive while the others aren't because of worse PP and accuracy - that is not an unreasonable opinion to have. That is why I polled on all 3 moves to see what the playerbase's thoughts are, and I'm confused why you keep bringing up the mention of Clamp as some kind of proof of this being a crusade instead of comprehensively surveying the playerbase re: what should be done with partial trapping and why.
I personally think that at the very least all of Wrap, Fire Spin, and Bind have strong arguments for being uncompetitive as a whole thanks to the combination of PP, luck reliance, and most of the Pokemon with these moves having access to status moves and/or Agility; Clamp could be argued to be fine on the basis of 16 PP and being a signature on a mon with neither Agility nor status moves, but that's irrelevant for UU anyway.
Yeah therein lies the core disagreement I think we will always have here. I do not consider PT in RBY uncompetitive unless there are over 2 mons running it and it is the teams gimmick. And I think there has been a gross exaggeration of how broken it is, just as there was in the RBY OU thread open on it rn.
I also think applying a transitive ban to a core mechanic is a dreadful decision, and this is the reason I think the agenda was brought to UU. There will neevr be enough support for a PT ban in OU. Why should NU, PU and ZU be affected with something deemed broken in UU? Examin every tier and meta on its own and leave it to the respective councils
Reminder that I already have a branch of PS (here) that (from the last I tested it) is able to properly account for this. I haven't checked if it has broken due to changes in PS from the last time I modified it, but if it still works right then once someone reviews it (I asked for someone to do so but I haven't gotten a response from them) then I can make the pull request to main for this to get fixed.
yes and hopefully if your submission doesnt have any issues and then we can actually get that change sometime soon (tho im not assuming anything).
but even if that fix happened tomorrow we have never played (any smogon rby tier) with cart-accurate wrap, we ultimately do not know what that would be like tho there have been various speculative convos about it. we cant have a tiering discussion about a move we have never played with, the only tiering convo we can have is about the move we have played with, a move that is a complete departure from cartridge. if we are going to allow that, then why not just make up our own moves that do whatever it is we think would help. we could create a new pt move that has 100% accuracy and does no damage.
idt i will ever understand how playing with a move that is basically just a glitch in the simulator is acceptable tiering policy, but allowing a grey area in vrs that is evaluated in collaboration with the tier below is not acceptable tiering policy.
~ ~ ~
are your comments about positioning directed at uu historically or in the present (or in the future)? bc idt wrap positioning is much of a thing in uu right now, tho maybe im wrong since im only a spectator nowadays. tentacruel doesnt rly have a lot of entry points to do any positioning, cuno is banned, theres dnite blizzard but u better get the predict right, might switch into gyara surf/blizz or vap surf occasionally tho that isnt exactly desirable. there can be tent mirrors (u dont necessarily click wrap there but u can), if you count that as positioning.
Ban PT in UU, Tent drops to NU, it is the fastest mon in the tier and has Wrap
PT gets banned in NU because between Zard Molt Tent its busted as hell
Tent drops to PU, it is the fastest mon in the tier and has Wrap, alongside Rapidash or whoever
PT gets banned in PU
etc etc.
Transitive bans are logical and also the only way tiering makes sense, but we've gotten way off topic. Doesn't make sense to take a tool away from a mon in one tier and then give it back the tool in a lower tier at all.
Ban PT in UU, Tent drops to NU, it is the fastest mon in the tier and has Wrap
PT gets banned in NU because between Zard Molt Tent its busted as hell
Tent drops to PU, it is the fastest mon in the tier and has Wrap, alongside Rapidash or whoever
PT gets banned in PU
etc etc.
Transitive bans are logical and also the only way tiering makes sense, but we've gotten way off topic. Doesn't make sense to take a tool away from a mon in one tier and then give it back the tool in a lower tier at all.
Lol there is no world in which Tent, even without Wrap, would ever drop out of UU so by all means argue to ban PT in UU if that's what you really desire but if fear it will drop and dominate NU and below is in your mind then this is a concern that holds no root in reality
Lol there is no world in which Tent, even without Wrap, would ever drop out of UU so by all means argue to ban PT in UU if that's what you really desire but if fear it will drop and dominate NU and below is in your mind then this is a concern that holds no root in reality
Yet that's not what's happening here. The mechanic is the thing potentially being transitively banned, not the mon(s). Tent will never drop but because you argue it makes UU uncompetitive with PT by proxy Dragonair in PU and Weepinbell in SU lose Wrap, Charmeleon in 7U loses access to Fire Spin and Tentacool loses wrap, none of which are unhealthy for their respective tiers. Those are just quick examples too, there are many more.
Unlike last time I was accused of going off on a tangent I will concede I am verging on doing so here. This is a criticism of transitive action of mechanics being applied universally in LTs and is perhaps better being contained to that thread however the whole reason I bring it up is that I am confused at both the timing and the motive of this proposal to begin with and this is the most likely reason imo. Any explicit argument made here for anti-PT within UU was nothing more than conjecture and there has been no real evidence provided to support a ban. No replays, no data, nothing. Find me a tournament that has been dominated by Spin Tales and Wrap dnite. At least in the anti PT OU thread there were attempts at data put forward. I pointed out that Dragonite rarely even runs Wrap in UU for example and still no-one has addressed this valid point
this isnt totally on topic but this is still the community pulse thread
is anyone against the idea that maybe, if bro doesnt drop, we end up dropping the UUBLs, but suspecting hypno out of the tier? so we just play UU + Lapras/Cuno? I genuinely think Lapras is the bigger contributor to a healthy UU than Hypno anyway.
I'm not saying pre-emptively suspect Hypno with no test, I'm saying accept that this is a possible outcome. That Hypno could be too much after giving it a fair test, but Lapras could be healthy still.
I also don't think Bro actually deals with Hypno that well either. Bro is on maybe like 1/3 of teams, far from a ubiquitous threat that will constantly shut down Hypno. Even when it's brought, I feel like it often trades at best with Hypno anyway. So I really don't think Hypno's place in UU hinges on Slowbro whatsoever.
Lapras' existence in UU definitely doesn't hinge on anything dropping. There's no reason to not test it even if we're 99% sure Hypno would be too much (which, no one should be this sure).
it kinda is just not directly in a (predictable) way. we're rating dragonair differently
"oh but dnair sucks in uu"
doesnt matter, it's still being evaluated with different tools lol. you cant really just decide if this is policy or not by theorymonning its effect.
Spot the odd one out.. only Tent uses PT extensively. Wrap was dnites least used move by far and Tales hardly even clicks Spin. So when I am reading all of Wrap, Spin and Bind can be problematic I am confused. Reality does not fit the narrative. And it's not like the mons themselves have an overbearing presence. Dnite 7th most used in RBYPL. Ninetales and Tangela tied for FIFTEENTH. You could argue that the threat of the moves makes you play around them but with such lopsided data on move usage I do not think that has enough traction.
Why this pulse even exists is a mystery to me, because the data does not reflect this argument that these moves, heck even these mons, are oppressive.
Clamp/Fire Spin/Bind were not shoehorned in, first of all Clamp is not even mentioned in the survey except specifically when asking if people feel all PT should be banned regardless of user or if we should ban the specific moves being used the most. There is a very obvious reason for this that people seem to miss: if we deem the entire mechanic of partial trapping as uncompetitive, then it does not matter how bad the user is. We still do not allow Cubone to use Fissure, even though Cubone would obviously still be irrelevant in UU with Fissure. If we say partial trapping is broken, we are saying a specific user or users make it too powerful; if it was just 1 user, we'd ban the user, and if it's multiple, we'd ban the move. It is also possible for Wrap to be broken or uncompetitive while the others aren't because of worse PP and accuracy - that is not an unreasonable opinion to have. That is why I polled on all 3 moves to see what the playerbase's thoughts are, and I'm confused why you keep bringing up the mention of Clamp as some kind of proof of this being a crusade instead of comprehensively surveying the playerbase re: what should be done with partial trapping and why.
I really am not sure how many more times I will have to say this every single time partial trapping is discussed, just going "it has low uses lol" is not an argument against uncompetitiveness and RBYPL is a sample of like, 6-8 players, hardly representative by itself, given that several people building for the tour (me, Maris for example) hate relying on Wrap or Tentacruel in our building
I really am not sure how many more times I will have to say this every single time partial trapping is discussed, just going "it has low uses lol" is not an argument against uncompetitiveness and RBYPL is a sample of like, 6-8 players, hardly representative by itself, given that several people building for the tour (me, Maris for example) hate relying on Wrap or Tentacruel in our building
ye if you fail to see the relevance in that data I provided then I'm sorry but I'm done now. There is a reason you have heard this many times before from OU veterans; it is of massive importance and was pulled from the biggest RBY tournament of the year so I'd expect the playerbase that generated the data to be strong at the tier. The data is an indicator of how many games are even influenced by excessive PT, and clearly it is a very small percentage. But I do await any counter data on this hypothetical PT threat with baited breath. I also emphasise with your assurance that you and Maris did not use this oppressive abomination PT capabilities on Ninetales and Dragonite solely because it is unreliable. I have long spared Ubers the wrath of SD Wrap Lickitung because it is unreliable. I have only used Wrap 10% of the time I have tested Licki, but rest assured it is broken and must be banned
to be honest the notion that PT is in any way comparable to fissure does deserve to be ignored
let's use the words for what they actually mean here and pull up the tiering policy
uncompetitive - does wrap turn games into matchup fests? in OU maybe occasionally, but definitely not in UU or other LTs. does it emphasize the result of RNG more than other moves? not really no, i'd argue wrap interactions resolve more consistently and predictably than most of the high volatility interactions of UU. critrates higher than 15% all over the place, slam paras, psy drops, ice moves are a literal 10% ohko move, you get the point - wrap is certainly not higher variance than the rest of the game
broken - does wrap dictate / require usage? as YBW is showing, clearly not (his arguments are not as irrelevant to the topic as you'd like them to be). do you have to run niche shit to counter it? i don't think dugtrio and kadabra qualify as niche, no. so wrap is not broken either in UU
unhealthy - this is the only place where a PT ban has some legs to stand on. quoting:
This can also be a state of the metagame. If the metagame has too much diversity wherein team building ability is greatly hampered and battling skill is drastically reduced, we may seek to reduce the number of good-to-great threats.
This is the most controversial and subjective one and will therefore be used the most sparingly. The Tiering Councils will only use this amidst drastic community outcry and a conviction that the move will noticeably result in the better player winning over the lesser player.
When trying to argue a particular element's suspect status, please avoid this category unless absolutely necessary. This is a last-ditch, subjective catch-all, and tiering arguments should focus on uncompetitive or broken first.
now - I don't particularly care to stick to the letter of the law, especially because these definitions are built for metagames that work a little differently from RBY's metagames. but if you're going to invoke these terms to try and dismiss YBW's points, then you should at least know what they mean, and if you knew what they meant, i don't know how you could still even conceive of arguing that wrap fits the definitions
some thoughts after reading thru a few times and processing
~ as amaranth has implicitly brought up, it is difficult to analyze the competitiveness of wrap or pt within a tier context that already has so much uncompetitiveness anyway. what would "proof" about uncompetitiveness of pt in rby underused look like? bc its pretty rare to encounter even an endgame state where a player has better than 90% win odds in this tier.
i think its kind of unavoidable that the discussion is very subjective and based on 'feel', especially when pt is not even something u necessarily see in every uu game.
eg, lets take dnite, a consensus top 5-6 mon even if it doesnt actually run wrap that frequently. idk that the option for dnite to run wrap is necessarily 'healthy', among the best checks to agility dnite are bulky waters who are not good checks to wrap dnite at all. ofc theres always moveset variations that can shift matchups, but not typically to that degree in rby lts. but what would be "evidence" regarding this point? some people may feel this is fine, eg have different plans for the different sets, and some ppl may feel it isnt fine, eg its too much pressure on an already constrained teambuilder.
i think most of the concerns about wrap in uu are about the pressure on the teambuilder which is alw going to be very subjective.
~ if this conversation is about uncompetitiveness of partial trapping as a mechanic, then shouldnt we be discussing pt across rby lowtiers in general and not just focusing on underused in isolation?
for example, "does it emphasize the result of RNG more than other moves?" in rby uu this may be debatable, but in rby nu afaik there is no debate on this at all. my perception is that there is a near-uniform and possibly even 100% uniform consensus that moltres is the highest variance mon in rby nu (and by a wide margin), this is a mon that can setup in front of its two biggest counters and sweep if it gets good rng and can also just fail to do anything when it misses. anytime ppl are watching a game and moltres comes out vs not mr mime, its a collective 'here we go again lol'. this isnt fully reducible to pt, molt generally doesnt run any accurate moves, but obv its a big part of it and particularly in the zard and kabu matchups.
fspin zard, i think its more complicated and im not as sure what ppls views are there, i dont feel its healthy but its 100% more of j a feeling rather than anything i could prove 'logically' to someone else
as for other lowers rby zu has already banned partial trapping, rby pu i pay zero attention to but afaik theres been a fair amount of complaints about agiliwrap dragonair.
some of these involve agility + pt specifically, but not all of them (nu charizard, zu arbok).
and then theres the other point that current uu is potentially extremely different from the uu we may have in a month or two after the ou vr.
im not sure im reading things correctly either, is the point of focusing on pt in current uu to address that even in the rby lower tier where partial trapping is least influential on the metagame, that it is still an uncompetitive influence? whereas if it isnt viewed as an uncompetitive mech in uu, then maybe there is some other approach we should be taking (which is what?), even if pt has a consensus uncompetitive influence in rby nu and zu? i did not get this 'vibe' from any of the comments "on either side" really, but im very unsure on how to read a lot of it.
the transitivity discussion extremely confuses me for example, if the majority were to deem pt uncompetitive in uu, then certainly they would also deem pt uncompetitive in nu where the problems are magnified a hundred times with spin being 70%, molt having agilispin setup opportunities vs almost the whole tier with the caveat of 30% paraslam chance, charizard not being outsped by any common pokemon (and aero doesnt damage it well + can get paraslammed anyway), etc. so how is transitivity at issue here idgi
~ ~ ~
again i think this whole convo is flipped on its head, since tiering policy was invoked several times above:
"I.) We play, to the best of our simulator's capabilities, with the mechanics given to us on the cartridge."
Some exceptions exist, such Sleep Clause and Freeze Clause (RBY / GSC), but they are to be avoided as much as possible"
this is supposed to be the first priority in all of tiering policy. according to policy the presumption is that we only play with moves and mechs that are accurate to cartridge, and if people want to preserve something that directly violates cartridge mechanics they need to argue why it is such an important part of the tier(s) to justify breaking cartridge.
instead, this conversation has been carried out according to
"III.) The onus of providing justification is on the side changing the status quo."
but this is surely only meant to apply to cases where principle I is not violated. after the "discovery" of normals being paraslam immune, the presumption is to fix the sim to be congruent with cartridge mechanics, not to preserve the status quo. etc.
why is the onus in this conversation on those making the proposal to bring rby lower tiers closer (much closer) to cartridge mechanics, to "prove" that the change would improve the tiers. the onus should be on those who specifically want to break cartridge mechanics, to demonstrate why they view pt as such a crucial mechanic to rby lts to justify doing so.
personally i dont care much for tiering policy and wouldnt rly be bothered if ppl wanted to change rng mechanics or ban moves like bslam blizz hbeam or whatever other ideas to try to improve the tiers. but the entire conversation here has revolved around policy arguments, we cant free eggy in uu, we cant let lower tiers influence the higher tier's determinations of viability or cutoff, we shouldnt do "complex bans", we shouldnt ban something without sufficient "proof" that its a problem, and so on the entire conversation is about policy and yet it completely discards the foundation of tiering policy which is to be cartridge accurate. idgi
this is supposed to be the first priority in all of tiering policy. according to policy the presumption is that we only play with moves and mechs that are accurate to cartridge, and if people want to preserve something that directly violates cartridge mechanics they need to argue why it is such an important part of the tier(s) to justify breaking cartridge.
PT not being properly implemented has been the #1 most important aberration of our ruleset but seemingly nobody in the community has any power to fix it so instead we argue about much less important shit as we've been doing in this thread
You make a bad leap of logic though, we play with Wrap to the best of our simulator's capabilities exactly as the policy describes. Wrap existing in the game in this flawed state is the best our simulator can do, and thus it's the 'default' for how we play. It is absolutely correct for the current PT-allowed situation to be the status quo. It is also completely revolting that the issue of proper implementation is not fixed after like 6+ years of us being aware of it and trying to bring it to the attention of the people who can actually do something about it
I will also say I am a bit tired of all the drones on both sides of the argument agreeing or disagreeing with anything that's (pro/anti)-Wrap by default and going through extraordinary mental gymnastics to keep telling themselves that they're right, but that's no fucking news at all in this community
Spot the odd one out.. only Tent uses PT extensively. Wrap was dnites least used move by far and Tales hardly even clicks Spin. So when I am reading all of Wrap, Spin and Bind can be problematic I am confused. Reality does not fit the narrative. And it's not like the mons themselves have an overbearing presence. Dnite 7th most used in RBYPL. Ninetales and Tangela tied for FIFTEENTH. You could argue that the threat of the moves makes you play around them but with such lopsided data on move usage I do not think that has enough traction.
I feel like one thing missing in this line of reasoning is that even if Tent is only brought to 70% of games, PT's presence is felt in 100% of games due to the fact that you generally have to play around a possible Tentacruel in the back. You can't throw away your Dugtrio to soften a team early-game for example, because then you might not have a way to outspeed Tentacruel. Obviously this is not something that is unique to Wrap, you keep your fliers/tang around for potential Duggy, and physically bulky mons around for potential Dodrio, etc, but the reason why I'm bringing this up this up is as a reminder that 70% usage doesn't mean PT was relevant in only 70% of games, so I dont think pointing to usage is v helpful.
I think the problem with PT in general is not one specific issue itself, but several issues lumped together:
Does it constrain the teambuilder? It forces you to load multiple fast mons, but you would probably do it anyway so not that much.
Is it RNG dependent? Yes but so are crits, speed ties, and status moves.
Is it centralizing during a game? I'd say yes since it forces you to walk on eggshells with your faster Pokemon to make sure you have a lategame plan for wrappers in the back, but this is true for other mons too.
These are not issues unique to Partial Trapping. You can say yes to all three of these questions for Dugtrio for example. I believe the main argument then lies in the degree to which Partial Trapping causes these problems. I personally think, for example, having to hit multiple 85% and 70% accurate moves in a row is more RNG dependent than Dugtrio crits. Some people might not agree with me (Amaranth for example explicitly stated this), and that's okay, and in this case they may not think Partial Trapping is unhealthy, which is fine. I agree with Amaranth then that there isn't really an objective way to judge if Wrap should be banned or not, as the "unhealthy" part of tiering policy is entirely subjective.
I also wanna address this real quick I think this pulse has been extremely useful personally, prior to this pulse I've only heard arguments from the pro-ban crowd, so it's good that I (and other ppl who have only rlly heard one side) get to hear both sides of the argument so they can make an informed decision if/when there is a suspect test.
I also wanna address this real quick I think this pulse has been extremely useful personally, prior to this pulse I've only heard arguments from the pro-ban crowd, so it's good that I (and other ppl who have only rlly heard one side) get to hear both sides of the argument so they can make an informed decision if/when there is a suspect test.
That is because people who complain are generally louder than the silent group (majority?) who is content with the status quo.
That's not a Pokémon-specific thing, though, but it is always to be kept in mind with discussions revolving around banning something.
Survey data time. We had 22 responses, of which 12 would currently qualify for a suspect test. I will post the graphs of the overall data, as well as the averages of the qualified and unqualified data for each question. Qualified respondent means someone who would currently meet reqs to partake in a suspect test if we did one immediately.
Brokenness
Average for all respondents: 4.04
Average for qualified respondents: 3.75
This indicates that the average respondent in both cases finds it somewhere in the middle, or somewhat broken, though responses are all across the spectrum. 6/12 qualified voters rated it at or above a 4.
Uncompetitiveness
Average: 4.45
Qualified voter average: 4.58
This was a much more polarizing question, and qualified voters actually ranked partial trapping as more uncompetitive on average. 7/12 qualified voters ranked partial trapping at a 6 or 7, while only 3 rated it at a 1. This supports the idea that qualified voters would in fact vote to ban partial trapping, but we also have more specific data on singular moves as well as proposed solutions.
Individual moves
Average: 5
Qualified: 4.67
There is a clear and strong desire for action on Wrap, despite a vocal minority opposing action, with 16/22 respondents and 8/12 qualified respondents responding with any number other than "1" (which I think is a fair divide to make since 5+ is the high end of the scale). Other moves are, spoilers, more contentious, but there are some confounding data points to get to after the individual moves - stay tuned.
Average: 4.09
Qualified: 3.41
Fire Spin is much more controversial, with 10 respondents on the left side of the graph, 11 on the right, and one in the middle; keep in mind that a "1" is the only number suggesting that someone is firmly against any action, while 2/3/4 suggest some indecision or desire for action, even if perhaps not being willing to ban. That said, support is clearly less strong than for Wrap for an individual move ban on Fire Spin.
Average: 3.55
Qualified: 3.42
Unsurprisingly, Bind is the move with the least support for a ban, having only one user with low Speed and limited ability to exploit it.
Options for Action
This is where it gets interesting. Despite the lukewarm support for banning Fire Spin and Bind, most respondents still support banning all partial trapping. Among qualified respondents, here's the breakdown:
Ban all PT: 7/12
Ban only Wrap: 6/12
Ban all but Clamp: 4/12
Ban Wrap + Spin: 4/12
Keep all PT legal, keep APT banned: 4/12
Keep all PT legal, unban APT: 2/12
I only want tiering action against mons, not moves: 1/12
In other words, the majority of voters still support banning all PT rather than targeting specific ones for being more powerful than others, which aligns with the results regarding brokenness vs uncompetitiveness; if someone believes the moves to be fundamentally uncompetitive and create more luck than skill, it stands to reason that it doesn't really matter how accurate the move is or who is using it. Notably, some users were in support of both banning all PT as well as legalizing APT and keeping all PT moves legal, or in favor of banning some PT moves but also in favor of keeping the status quo, rather than respondents being split firmly into camps like the 1-7 scales above.
Bit of a lazy addition but there is no portion of voters that seems to strongly support testing mons over the moves, 4/12 qualified wanted to test tent and 1/12 wanted to test Dnite.
Conclusions/Personal Thoughts
Ultimately, all of the above seems to point toward acting on PT, but doesn't necessarily point on a clear direction. Most voters seem to at least support a Wrap ban, with 8/12 supporting some level of banning PT moves, but we also have potential upcoming drops affecting the tier heavily, so I think it'd be best to get some thoughts on whether people think it'd be best to:
1. move forward with a suspect right now
2. wait for potential tiering changes, test those with PT, evaluate potentially banning PT
3. do something else like unbanning UUBLs immediately or during the yearly ladder rotation
There's a few things I think make this a bit messier:
1. Upcoming ladder
2. Upcoming VR should be here before any tours bar the spotlight, anyway, and that may affect the tier to a way bigger degree; how do people feel about C+, for those who have played both regular UU and C+?
3. Unbanning stuff or whatever else in the midst of ALTPL, which is already almost over, is kind of "pointless" as a test anyway
4. Whether we consider PT as uncompetitive or specific things like Wrap Tent as "broken" heavily influences what action should look like anyway, and some people flat out do not believe it's uncompetitive, use other definitions that don't align with the Smogon definition, simply do not care about uncompetitiveness as a concept, or conflate action vs broken elements with action against uncompetitive elements even though they look different.
5. Regardless of competitiveness or brokenness, is PT even healthy? It seems like it frustrates and drives off a lot of people, general community and qualified opinion both align with "PT is annoying and I want it gone," and frankly, as nice as idealism about objective tiering policy feels, tiers need players to continue existing and developing and literally zero parts of tiering are objective, just varying degrees of subjective. This is way more nebulous but it is something that should be discussed - are the vibes of PT so rancid that regardless of anything else, people also just want it gone? How much should we value hypothetical players or short-term players who got driven off by their distaste for Wrap? I have my own opinions but will cover that below.
Personal thoughts: I think waiting for the OU VR results makes some sense, but a supermajority also favors banning Wrap for being uncompetitive, which I'm not convinced somehow changes by dropping in a bunch of slow near-mandatory mons to the tier, potentially (Jolteon is a different story, maybe, but like... we have faster mons than Tent that have Twave already and how's that going?). I think regardless, PT creates some degree of bullshit in teambuilding and play where you have to live in this constant state of fear of one paraslam or crit on your fast frail mon enabling Tentacruel to just take over the entire game, even if Wrap-less UU right now still involves lots of fast mons hitting each other and crits being big swings. The disagreement between me and anti-ban people mostly seems to be if the degree of bullshit it imposes is "too much," which is subjective, but my personal read of it is that it's too big of an influence, especially when playing C+ and finding it infinitely better.
I do find the idea that there was a vocal minority to ban PT a bit funny when the opposite is borne out in the survey - the loud minority of people are the ones coming out in opposition to a ban in this thread, and I'm glad they spoke up even if I don't agree with the points. I did consider a lot of them and I think Amaranth has the most convincing arguments by far, though I do have to say, I don't find the "crits are more variance than PT" argument particularly convincing because we don't have the power to ban a mechanic from the game, but Wrap is firmly in our control and I don't believe that just because there's big sources of uncontrollable variance that we should ignore smaller ones that also induce big builder and play restrictions and flat-out remove most of a player's options per turn, reducing the game to "stay/switch" until you win the mindgame (or win it enough random number of times in a row, in the case of just going to something faster and waiting + having to not get owned by them switching to something that beats you).
I think C+ with PT banned is an absurd improvement on current UU, absolutely night and day, and I do find the idea of bringing those mons down then playing another year or two of "Tent/Nite/even Vic Wrap everything forever because Lap Hypno Bro are all slower than them and 2 of them can trade paralysis with Jolteon until we admit that Wrap is a problem" to be really demoralizing. Sure, we can argue hypotheticals all day - just bring fast frail teams so you can paralyze all the wrappers before they do that! But what about losing to those Lap + Hypno teams because your frail team just doesn't trade hits with those well and gets 2.5-for-1'd by Sing Lapras? etc etc - but going around in circles on the subjective point of "is Wrap stupid/overpowered/unbearable/luck-based" for years sounds thoroughly unappealing to me, personally, I'd rather just make a decision on whether we want RBY to always have wonky PT-based variance or not and stick to it, rather than test it in every kind of meta and wait for several years of stability before we say "okay it actually is too much and needs a ban." I'm open to whatever thoughts people have, though, and I hope people enjoy the data.
Edit: Oh yeah here's the comments from the end of the survey
The meta will be worse in the immediate aftermath without PT than it currently is now but it can get better
N/A
wrapless UU has so far not seen any significant shift towards allowing slower mons to be decent, you still need revenge killers for everything and stuff. i don't see any particular evidence that wrap is worse for game quality
I clicked "broken" = 5 because of the definition given, not because it is broken in my view.Ban Pokemon instead of moves.
im genuinely quitting uu if wrap or at least tent stay legal
Delete it.
Read my smog post
While I do believe it is incredibly strong, the abusers themselfs are lackluster. The only notable user is Tentacruel and Rapidash
i think wrap is very silly and really really enjoy C+ where it's banned i don't really play regular UU though
I fundamentally disagree with banning wrap, it relies on the user being able to predict their opponent correctly to do anything useful and has a lot of drawbacks, people aren't random and you can absolutely predict what they do and outplay them while they go for it. It's a skill check that is fair for both parties and adds a lot of complex nuance to the game and how it's played.
Wrap and more specifically Tentacruel has driven me away from this tier and if it remains a centralizing aspect I don't see myself playing again. C+ has been considerably more fun for removing such bs.
Partial trapping is completely fine.
It's also very bad optics for RBY as a whole
Doesn't make sense to tackle Partial Trapping in parts via specific move bans. It should be all or nothing because it's uncompetitive and makes games completely non-engaging.
Target PT first, suspect tent if PT is not banned, remove APT ban and suspect dragonite itself if nessecary after ban
wake up mareeple
BAN WRAP
My thoughts were written in the Pulse Thread, 21st Jan 2025, page 3
