HGSS DPP - Sand Veil Discussion

Firstly, for PP's DPP 1U, we will follow the same Pokémon bans as Smogon currently does. However, recently, they suspected Sand Veil / Gliscor etc. and I feel like we could reach a different conclusion here. We don't strictly use evasion clause on PP, rather, we list it as banning the moves. This makes it much more simple for newer players. In this vein, Sand Veil Gliscor is obviously a problem that we want gone, but we want it to be relatively simple to describe if possible, and we want as little collateral as possible.

I propose at first that we have this rule:
Sand Veil / Snow Cloak are illegal abilities to have on Pokémon that have an alternative legal ability available.

This would keep Froslass intact, but remove Gliscor shenanigans.

Please post your opinions, particularly if you're an experienced player of DPP.

We are likely to start DPP 1U Seasons during April, but this will be confirmed much closer to the time.

 

Thing is stuff like Gliscor doesn't need weather support on its own side nessecarily, especially considering how prominent ttar and hippo are. Sand Veil Gliscor itself needs to be banned and we need to come up with a sensible mean to prevent general evasion abuse from these abilities without outright removing access to Pokémon such as Froslass which would be pretty big collateral.

That being said 'A possible extension to minimize evasion abuse is to prevent Pokemon with only Sand Veil / Snow Cloak from being on a team with Sand Stream / Snow Warning.' in combination with what I proposed does sound like a viable option to realistically prevent intentional abuse in lower tiers, but on the flipside I think we can deal with that hurdle when we come to it.

I guess the reasoning for wanting to keep Gliscor around is that it's a good Pokémon in the tier even without evasion abuse, and the abuse of evasion is similarly potent/luck-based to stuff such as double team and horn drill, so it really feels like the right thing to remove Sand Veil Gliscor from the tier by previously held standards.

That reminds me though, we should also think about this in terms of PP's standards. DPP 1U with Sand Veil Gliscor is suitably diverse quite clearly. The question is, is it suitably balanced with Sand Veil Gliscor around? If not then it should go in some form.

 

Ban SV Gliscor, that's the problem. Everything else with Sand Veil / Snow Cloak is too marginal to really make any difference. To prevent collateral, probably just ban Sand Veil (or just ban it on Gliscor).

Anyways, I for one can confirm that the tier is better off without SV Gliscor, as the miss chance can be really big especially for the dreaded SubSD set (which terrorized the tier for a long while). The tier would still be diverse, but newer players would also find out that SubSD Gliscor exists and start abusing it, making more Gliscor teams, which is exactly what we don't want. BAN

Anyways, as far as all this goes, I'd also like to see if a few more bans could be pushed through, as it's stuff Smogon has failed to seriously address but still hurts the tier as a whole. For one of these full BP (as well as GlisPass) has to go, its pretty much impossible to beat assuming correct match-up (as in the victim isn't running like Lead Aerodactyl), and it's essentially just a sequence of moves to be played: an example of how broken it is is how users ShakeItUp and DennisSsS (or whatever their names are) top-scored in DPP during ST19 despite never having really played the tier before: they just spammed BP and got easy wins with it. Aside from that, I'd also like Nape suspected at the very least, as it's really hard to deal with: kinda reminscient of BW/ORAS Lando-I in that its got great speed tier with solid attacking stats, coverage on the entire tier, and it compromises its few checks with mindless U-Turn spam. Though the nature of the tier keeps it from sweeping as much it does tend to always get a couple of kills and usually disjoint an opposing team for one of its partners to clean up. Everything else is fine (I'd like a suspect metagame with LatiMence back though just to see how it plays, but I'm pretty sure we'd just reban them anyways so w/e)

tl;dr
Ban Sand Veil (or just Sand Veil on Gliscor if you fear for the NUs)
BAN Baton Pass (probably worse than SVScor actually)
Suspect Nape (I'd vote Ban but honestly w/e)

 

I mean banning just Sand Veil + Gliscor is definitely an option if we want it, and I'm open to dealing with baton pass (maybe use the clause we have for ADV?)

Suspecting nape sounds a little far out but if other DPPers see the merit in it we can try it.

 

Some quotes by prominent Smogon DPP players on why Nape is broken:
Ojama - Infernape is the deadliest sweeper of the tier. I'm still amazed that a lot of people still haven't realized that Infernape is a guaranteed win 90% of the times. If you look closely to my DPP Cup games or Go10's SPL/Tour/WCop games, he and I won pretty much everytime with Infernape because no one brings real counters to it. What makes it so scary? Its Speed, Double Stab, and U-Turn. People think that Starmie is a safe counter to Infernape until they have their Heatran in front of an Infernape and take 200 seconds to stay in or send in Starmie on the possible U-Turn. Always hilarious to watch. I could also argue on the fact that most of the current Stall Teams (Heist's) are weak to NPlot Infernape. Infernape's only flaw is its weakness to all hazards, but I suppose that you're allowed to pair it up with a Spinner. Oh also, Rotom-W and Gengar are good checks if you want to RK it but because of U-Turn (yo Pursuiter behind) and because they are both OHKO'd by FireBlast/Flare Blitz, I'm not sure if you really want to consider these as "counters".

BKC - Anyway I agree Ape is terrifying with the right support (which is very little and nothing out of the ordinary), his checks bar Nidoqueen, Hippowdon, Swampert and Gliscor have the same issues Loom's do: SR, Pursuit, U-turn (which Ape uses himself!) and being annoyed by sand. You'll notice that the the latter three aren't really great checks since special mix just unloads on them...I'm not a fan of setup Ape but I agree that a lot of teams would get run through should it grab a boost....it's not even that it's frail, Ape switches in a lot more easily than you'd think, surprisingly. (Said post also makes the usual points agains Nape in that offensive pressure keeps it from coming in while sand+LO+switching in wears it down and keeps it from sweeping, but still).

Tesung - I support infernape for S. I don't have too much experience with choice band, but the mere fact it exists takes away starmie as a good check which is huge. The set I use on about half the offenses ill make is mixape, and I honestly think there is almost no reason not to use it on offense. Its fast as fuck for the meta, so its not useless vs offense, and nearly all stalls lack a good way to take it on. Yeah, there is life orb, but it just means you have to play it not like a pussy, and honestly if u can get 2 kills early vs stall that should be enough to win the game. It has literally no safe switchin with rocks on the field, and while its frail, it checks a couple of important things for offense, most notably scizor and ddtar, 2 of the biggest banes to offense (along with lucario/low health emp/probly other stuff im forgetting)

I see it does have flaws but nothing else breaks and sweeps like it does

Go10 -
You don't really need to dominate the whole meta, 90% of it is enough and we can safely say that Ape can do it with one hand. While it is not as hard to handle like Tar/Tran/Jira, he is nowhere so easily counterable like say Zapdos, Rotom-A or Breloom in A+.
People keep talking about hazards, sand, life orb and shit like that, what's the point when half your team has to take suicid action to mitigate the damages you have to take ? Infernape doesn't need the whole day to do his job, and unlike Starmie who is fast and powerful, noone can take a hit when you press the good buttons (and you have 2 buttons, 3 if your spidersens warn you of the Starmie switch).

Ape isn't as verstaile as the rest of the metagame, but he is league ahead of half of them and can't be compared to the joker in A+ beside Dragonite.

tldr; keep denying this and you will be anal ravaged everytime you encounter a good Ape. Not like I hate it that way though hehe

Go10 Post 2 - As I said, I totaly agree with Infernape not being on par in the versatility department with Jirachi, Tran and Tar, but he is ahead of them offensively while his only default being his hard time to come in. He is totally dominating the metagame and can't be compared at all to the mons in A+ ranking, it's a huge joke to do that.

W/e, I can't care less about ranking, just gave my opinion for the sake of it. I just found funny someone like Starmie who at most kill ONE pokemon and is SO versatile is S while Ape isn't. You are a good player and know how deadly Ape is and how he can sweep easily a team by making 1-2 crazy plays like U-turn right ? right ? right ? right ?

(Postscript: I did get ravaged by Nape a couple times while laddering for DPLT (with teams that in theory had 3-4 ways to handle it), so maybe I'm biased a bit. But still, with a bit of support and a good (or just intuitive) player behind it Nape is nearly impossible to stop regardless of team/opponent/plays.)

 

Please don't even think about suspecting Infernape. Yes, it's amazing. No, it's not anywhere close to broken (Jirachi is way worse). Residual damage is a huge thorn in its side, 4MSS is a thing, it's not frail but it's frail, and there are tons of good ways to deal with it that happen in every game it's in.

Sand Veil should be banned on its own, leave Snow Cloak, etc. Get rid of BP too (don't care how it's done but full chains and Glispass both must leave)

Latias could be given a try, 50/50 on Salamence/Mew

 

This is gonna be tricky to do nicely but I'll think about it.

It almost makes me want to say just ban gliscor, as far as i'm aware it's a relevant component of full BP? And there's sand veil shenanigans AND gliscpass. I'm tempted to say that whilst it's perhaps not broken in its own right, it's broken in like 2-3 different ways down to stuff that's more generalisable.

I see 2 options

1 - ban gliscor
2 - ban gliscor + limit BPers to 3 per team (like we do in ADV on here) if that's not enough for fullpass
3 - limit BPers to 3 per team + ban evasion abilities on Pokémon that have access to alternative abilities + ban the combination of Gliscor + Baton Pass

Is the uglier ruleset suggested as #3 worth it over whichever is the more appropriate of #1 and #2, or at this point is there some reasonableness to saying gliscor's broken?

Not opposed, but am only willing to do this if we can drum up a decent playerbase (say like 8 or so active players total who are at a sufficiently high level)

 

I'd prefer a no passing of speed + other boosts, that covers everything fine. gliscor isn't a part of full chains. the evasion thing sounds good.

also I think latias legitimately should be unbanned (it certainly helps with the suspect-worthy infernape!) but it's not necessary so wutevz

 

Looking for other opinions, like from our tiering perspective, which is better - banning speed-passing, or banning gliscor+bp and limit to 3 bpers per team? Evidently we need one to solve the issues.

And BKC if you get a handful of DPPers on here and interested I can guarantee we can suspect latias.

 

Okay I've decided for now the DPP 1U ruleset (Latias re-test notwithstanding):
Smogon DPP OU with these adjustments
- Sand Veil/Snow Cloak total ban removed
- Sand Veil/Snow Cloak banned when there is an alternative usable ability
- Baton Pass + Speed-boosting move is illegal (this applies within the teambuilder)

 

Something else interesting I saw brought up was possibly testing removing stealth rock. What're people's thoughts on that?

 

sr is broken, take that as you will

 

Yeah and I've seen arguements saying how it removes a lot of checks/counters for various mons.

Also I'd like to say why I think it's more reasonable to consider it broken in DPP and not in ORAS:
Counterplay.
In ORAS (1U in particular) there's magic bounce, defog, and regenerator. In DPP there's only spinning which has plenty of flaws (come DPP onwards I'd include low distribution in the list of flaws)

That being said not having counterplay isn't enough to say something is broken, albeit in the context of Pokémon I'd argue that is the case. Being used on every team etc. doesn't make something inherently broken either (think Leftovers...)

Trouble is there's like really no other game where something like this exists. It's really hard to say.

autumn leaves if we banned stealth rock do you think latias would still be fine in the metagame/do you think it would be worth considering unbanning anything else?

 

I think latias makes the metagame less sr dependent, actually. maybe manaphy would be ok

 

From this thread is our criteria for whether something ought to be banned.

Does stealth rock satisfy that? It's debatable and there's a strong case for it.

I think in this case it very much needs to be tested, to see if after testing the metagame for some time, that the claim about diversity holds true.

This will be the schedule:
DPP 1U NSR new frontiers tournament (where NSR = No Stealth Rock) with (? - discuss) Latias
with a discussion thrads alongside - one for discussing whether the meta appears to be holding up with respect to increased diversity and as a consequence if we feel banning stealth rock is the right thing to do, and one for general metagame discussion. Then, a vote will be held. We can determine the details of that later depending upon how popular new frontiers is.

 

Signups - DPP 1U New Frontiers - Stealth Rock Suspect | Pokémon Perfect
DPP 1U Stealth Rock Suspect Metagame Discussion | Pokémon Perfect
Is Stealth Rock banworthy in DPP 1U? | Pokémon Perfect