Topic: Competitive Pokemon Discussion Topic

I actually agree with @MegaBeedrill for the most part. T-Flame, while I like it, it one of the most overcentralizing mons in the game. Every team needs a way to deal with T-Flame. Shadow Tag is pretty much the second most broken ability ever after Moody. I'm also of the opinion that Speed Boost is an ability that is on thin ice. IMO, Ninjask and Yanmega are pretty much the only things holding it back from an all out ban. Offering an option to remove crits outside of scripted crits like Frost Breath would be awesome too.

IMO Aegislash is one of those pokemon that doesn't have a hard counter, but has plenty of checks that keep it from being OP. In addition to what you mentioned, Aegislash also suffers from low speed and some really bad weaknesses.

Where I disagree with you is on the uncompetitive elements. I think uncompetitive elements need to be removed when most of the ways to counter them is with luck. Sleep and OHKO moves fit that bill, as there really aren't many ways to avoid them beyond outspeeding or a special ability. But Attract and Confusion really focus on a specific set of pokemon. Attract for pokemon of the opposite gender, and Confusion on physical attackers. Beyond that, they are both volatile, so they can be negated by just switching out.

Paralysis is a little different, as it's key competitive usage isn't the 1/3rd chance of failing to move but the drop in speed, often crippling sweepers. I think like with crits, there should be an option to turn off the random aspect of Paralysis.

Greninja is banned. The suspect test is still going on and results are out around Sunday. So he's not really banned yet but it's Smogon. 90% of suspect tests result in bans,

Well I can tell you that as of right now it isn't. Fought some on Showdown today.

Base 60 speed is a pretty safe zone for aegislash, you wouldn't want to take a hit in blade form.

True, but again you can't really control what gender to make your pokemon and prepare for attract. It's not common but it's a surprising and uncompetitive thing that can abuse RNG on it's own. Confuse ray is swagger but doesn't give physical pokemon sweeping potential if they do not kill themselves. Flatter is another one I forgot to bring up.. it's distribution is way too low though. Say the least, it's RNG abuse and something you just cannot prepare for outside otherwise subpar items and abilities. Using the same logic as swagger's ban those should be banned as well dispite how little of a problem they are in smogon tiers.

The option to turn off secondary effects, accuracy modifers, and basicly anything RNG or luck based would definitly be an amazing feature for the games. Actually it would be such a major impact for competitive you couldn't even imagine.

Swagger was only banned in conjunction with Prankster if I'm not mistaken? Not having priority and not giving a stat boost makes Confuse Ray fine in my opinion. It's just as much as a gamble for your opponent as it is for you. Most things that get it have better options to run anyway.

Wih paralysis I feel it definitely has a place in competitive. Like Ikhan said the main use of it is to lower speed. This cripples pretty much all sweepers and is a way to prevent yourself from getting 6-0'd. There's an entire type immune to it to. Two actually. The only way you can paralyze Ground types is with Glare which has very low distribution and I'm not even sure it's possible to paralyze electric types anymore.
The 30% chance to not move sucks but that's how it is. An option to turn off random chances like that would be very damn interesting. I wonder if Game Freak would ever try it? I feel though that accuracy serves as balance for some moves. A never missing Draco Meteor sounds scary.

Paralysis isn't as big of a problem agreed, just brought it up because it's an RNG factor that may mess with games. Certainly disabling that para chance would help.

Swagger was banned entirely, not aloud to be used outside AG. Also sableye and volbeat are prankster users and can confuse ray. (the later sucks but the former is viable)

Here is a perfect example.. (for anybody that has oras): QTHG-WWWW-WWWT-FFF5 This is gamefreak's definition of competitive.. as skillful as my plays were, I still got cheated throughout the game with RNG. (I still won tho.. somehow)

I agree to an extent, but I actually like the RNG factor somewhat. Limiting it is one thing, but I'm not sure I'd like getting rid of it. There's times when RNGesus is on your side, then there's times when freeze hax happens.

Also do people even use Attract?

No but when they do it's just as annoying

I think this is a great topic.
While I'll agree RNG can get annoying, it's a part of the game. And honestly. I don't mind it! Look at Poker. Fun with old pals and commonly played with betting, tournaments and all that, but there's still luck in it. You can do some calculations in your head to see if the odds are gonna be in your favor but the luck is still there.
Looking at more streamlined card games like say Yu-Gi-Oh, which still has a large community and tournaments, luck's attempted to be minimized with many cards and monsters with effects to search for a card you need in your deck rather than waiting to draw it, but the chance of luck screwing you up is still there. If you're playing competitive Pokemon you're accepting that RNG is a big part of that. Your skill is still a big part of determining who wins though. It's how the game is and I like it.

One thing I've noticed is that I'm less frustrated with hax if the other guy laughs along with me. I've had some matches where the RNG just screwed me over beyond belief or I just straight up made bad plays, but the opponent was sympathetic and/or fun to talk with.

It's when there's silence, or worse, when the other person's an a-hole, that I about tear my hair out in angst.

I get very salty if it's a competitive match and hax screws me. I've had live streams of me battling people.. and the streamer gets the crit and sweeps my team which is embarassing when 100+ people are watching...

Naturally though if it's with a friend or something we do both share laughs as it's not over competitive or anything like that. I often say when I win due to hax our score is 0-0 since even though I legimately won it was complete luck.

I've been to VGC events and people constantly apologize for the hax they get. Lol it's really nice of them.

Ygo has less luck base and it's more in the moment. Since you and your opponent can have bad luck in drawing cards. Ygo's evened. It's all down to the actual plays. Pokemon can rely on more luck through side effects, ratio, reads and accuracy as people tend to setups and future events. Saying some match was won through 'Luck' is almost never used in YGO than Pokemon.

Showdown now as an official app for Android phones! It's in beta but still works nicely for me.
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/showdown-app-for-android...

I think NL just prohibited posting showdown links. Something about copyright infrigment.

Huh, pretty weird since people posted Showdown links almost daily in the X/Y thread. They just allowed talk of homebrew on past consoles recently too. Oh well.

Yeah they finally took notice. I remember posting a replay in the oras thread and it got deleted. The ORAS thread was much more moderated than the x/y one.

I've been thinking of getting into the OR/AS meta on showdown.

Any recommendation on new things I should look out for when building my team?

Everybody runs a scarf landorus-t on almost every team so watch out for that. It can be a real pain if you don't know how to deal. Trappers like magnezone are pretty everywhere too.

I already have a pretty decent way of dealing with Scarf Lando-T and Magnezone, and Lando-T was a big thing before OR/AS came out.

Nothing in regards to new Megas or anything?