Discussion on any aspect of competitive Pixelmon.

What Tier should Blaze Blaziken be in?

2
20%
3
30%
5
50%
User avatar
By SimonFlash
#187341
Geodude671 wrote:
Spoiler:
Arguing that Blaziken should be tiered lower because Speed Boost is hard to get doesn't really make sense. In BW a Speed Boost Torchic was insanely hard to get even compared to other HA Pokemon. You only could get one per save ever, and the chances of it having good IVs across the board was virtually nil. That didn't stop it from overpowering the meta, not in the least bit. Sheer Force Landorus was hard to get too, you even had to pay real money to get it because you needed a DSi app, and yet we still banned that. Hoopa-U is insanely hard to get, and yet we banned it because it overpowered the meta. Just because something is hard to get doesn't mean it should be tiered lower. Blissey wasn't NU in ADV just because Chansey had a 1% encounter rate. Tauros wasn't UU in RBY just because it had a 1% encounter rate. Celebi was Uber in GSC because of its insane (for the time) stat spread and sizable movepool; we didn't let it into the meta because its event was held literally once. Just because SB Blaziken is hard to get doesn't mean it shouldn't be banned.

"But Geo, what about servers that don't have hidden abilities?" They can tweak the tier list to account for that. The tier list accounts for hidden abilities because by default Pixelmon allows hidden ability Pokemon to spawn, albeit rarely. Blaziken isn't the only Pokemon that relies on its hidden ability. Ninetales and Politoed, for instance, would almost certainly be PU if they didn't have their weather abilities. Simon, you mentioned Pressure Lugia, but Lugia is still broken even with the less optimal ability; Multiscale is just gravy. The Nidos would probably be RU, or potentially BL3 or NU. Venusaur is workable with Overgrow, but Chlorophyll is the better ability by far. The list goes on.

And urbymine: We're definitely not going to ban only certain sets. The problems with tiering a certain Pokemon differently based on its ability has already been stated; doing things like making physical Chansey PU while making the wall set BL will exacerbate these problems manyfold.

urbymine hit it right on the money - Blaziken's exception stems from it being unusable in standard play. I'll reword the poll question to express this-

Should we ban Speed Boost Blaziken from standard play or Blaziken itself?

Very different connotations here, which is why it's important to note that Ubers is a banlist for pokemon more than it is meant to be a playable tier. This project is our chance to improve upon what Smogon has built as much as it is just copying over tier lists. It's up to us to decide what changes we should make based on the differences in Pixelmon, and what changes are improvements over Smogon's lists themselves.

Also, Smogon tiers weren't designed to be used in the games themselves, they were made and defined on Showdown where pokemon don't have to be caught.

Needless to say, I think most of us can safely say that it's a lot harder to find and breed pokemon in Pixelmon. Most people tend to reset their game until they get the abilities and IV's they want on legendaries and whatnot. We need to keep in mind that our system will be used by servers that require players to catch and breed their pokemon as opposed to just spawning them in as on Showdown.

By JeanMarc1
#187346
SimonFlash wrote:urbymine hit it right on the money - Blaziken's exception stems from it being unusable in standard play. I'll reword the poll question to express this-

Should we ban Speed Boost Blaziken from standard play or Blaziken itself?

Very different connotations here, which is why it's important to note that Ubers is a banlist for pokemon more than it is meant to be a playable tier. This project is our chance to improve upon what Smogon has built as much as it is just copying over tier lists. It's up to us to decide what changes we should make based on the differences in Pixelmon, and what changes are improvements over Smogon's lists themselves.

Also, Smogon tiers weren't designed to be used in the games themselves, they were made and defined on Showdown where pokemon don't have to be caught.

Needless to say, I think most of us can safely say that it's a lot harder to find and breed pokemon in Pixelmon. Most people tend to reset their game until they get the abilities and IV's they want on legendaries and whatnot. We need to keep in mind that our system will be used by servers that require players to catch and breed their pokemon as opposed to just spawning them in as on Showdown.


Except that the reason that Blaziken being banned from standard play shouldn't be the main reason to unban it in lower tiers. I'm gonna bring a few similar examples, but from Ubers instead. If Blaze-iken is considered not OP, does that mean we'd unban a Wall Mewtwo set? I mean, people spent a lot of effort catching a Mewtwo, it wouldn't be fair to prevent it from using it in a competitive environment if he's not that powerful. I think that saying that we can improve the tier list without explaining in what way we're trying to improve it. Basically, Pixelmon is very similar to Smogon, the main difference is that Pixelmon has a smaller pool of Pokemon, including both viable and non viable ones.

I'd like to first debunk the rumore that Smogon tiers weren't built with the fact that it wasn't meant to be played on the main games. It's actually the opposite that made Smogon what it is. Smogon mainly became popular by implementing a 6v6 standard ruleset that most people could easily follow to challenge eachother online as early as gen 4. Might've been for longer, but I wasn't into competitive before that. Yes, it was assumed that the Pokemon were always in conditions that most players would never obtain, with perfect IVs, but it was still made with the games in mind mainly.

And the fact that Pokemon must be bred is actually the main reason why it should taken seriously. If it's harder to accomplish, it just means that there's less people who are going to take it seriously, but there's always a hardcore player who's going to take it seriously. Neglecting that gap is neglecting the fact that there's going to be a player who's going to take the effort to breed it.

And there's also the fact that banning a specific set on a Pokemon is much harder to enforce for a tournament organiser. If you see the Blaziken, and Blaziken is banned, you know you can DQ the player. If it's Speed Boost Blaziken, you need to have evidence that he is in fact speed boost. And then you need to check every battle with a Blaziken to make sure that he is in fact breaking the rules, which can be a logistical nightmare if the tournament is decent sized and that Blaziken is a popular pick.
User avatar
By urbymine
#187415 while it's a little more haywire when you ban specific pokemon traits, logistically it shouldnd be that bad, small tournaments can be spectated, bigger tournament should just carry the incentive of the opponent taking a screenshot for evidence.


But let's try to compromise here.
How about we make a main list, which excludes banning sets (they just bann the pokemon outright as soon as any of it's sets taps into uber. that way, people who prefer simplicity have it their way, once that list is done, we'll create a subslist , different from the original one where we go more into detail and do ban/allow certain sets that aren't considered stupid.
User avatar
By Geodude671
#187435 Yes, we should ban a Pokemon if any one of its sets is overpowering. I would definitely make an exception for something like Moody and to a lesser extent Swagger, moves and/or abilities that are uncompetitive in and of themselves. I don't want to ban Speed Boost itself because it really only breaks Blaziken, and in LC Carvanha.
User avatar
By urbymine
#187446
Geodude671 wrote:Yes, we should ban a Pokemon if any one of its sets is overpowering. I would definitely make an exception for something like Moody and to a lesser extent Swagger, moves and/or abilities that are uncompetitive in and of themselves. I don't want to ban Speed Boost itself because it really only breaks Blaziken, and in LC Carvanha.


i don't support banning speed boost as a whole, just it paired with blaziken, which brings us back to our original squable, but my suggestion still stands on making a main list and a sub list to ban specific sets.
User avatar
By DemonicRage
#187493
Geodude671 wrote:Arguing that Blaziken should be tiered lower because Speed Boost is hard to get doesn't really make sense. In BW a Speed Boost Torchic was insanely hard to get even compared to other HA Pokemon. You only could get one per save ever, and the chances of it having good IVs across the board was virtually nil. That didn't stop it from overpowering the meta, not in the least bit. Sheer Force Landorus was hard to get too, you even had to pay real money to get it because you needed a DSi app, and yet we still banned that. Hoopa-U is insanely hard to get, and yet we banned it because it overpowered the meta. Just because something is hard to get doesn't mean it should be tiered lower. Blissey wasn't NU in ADV just because Chansey had a 1% encounter rate. Tauros wasn't UU in RBY just because it had a 1% encounter rate. Celebi was Uber in GSC because of its insane (for the time) stat spread and sizable movepool; we didn't let it into the meta because its event was held literally once. Just because SB Blaziken is hard to get doesn't mean it shouldn't be banned.

And urbymine: We're definitely not going to ban only certain sets. The problems with tiering a certain Pokemon differently based on its ability has already been stated; doing things like making physical Chansey PU while making the wall set BL will exacerbate these problems manyfold.


We are not arguing the blaziken should be lowered, we are arguing that blaze blaziken should be lowered a tier or two. Speed boost Blaziken as of now is staying the same i believe, because unlike Blaze, it breaks the game. Blaze blaziken is the only pokemon being suspected right now :]
User avatar
By CritsAreFair
#187621 "Of course, priority helps with that - right? While priority moves are a large threat to Blaziken itself, the main reason it was banned to Ubers is because of it's ability to pass stats onto other pokemon. By using Protect and Swords Dance with a Focus Sash, a Speed Boost Blaziken is practically guaranteed +2 attack and +2 speed by the end of the turn. Top that off with Baton Pass, and the issue becomes clear."


Great, when do you plan on suspecting SmashPass Smeargle? SpeedPass is difficult to deal with but SmashPass wins games. Thanks to Spore it can nearly guarantee a safe pass against the vast majority of opponents (namely anything that lacks a priority or multihit move) and access to Magic Coat makes it much more difficult to shut down with Taunt or Whirlwind.

On a side note I really do not think Pixelmon has a large enough community of experienced competitive battlers to support a project like this.

As for the issue of Blaziken, Blaze Blaziken is by no means a threat worthy of being banned (it struggled to keep afloat in UU before it got Speed Boost), so the issue here is really whether or not you want to do complex bans. I see no reason not to, personally.
User avatar
By CritsAreFair
#187663 Also I forgot to mention it yesterday but Smogon tiers are usage based. You don't vote Pokemon down into UU with a suspect test, you vote them into a banlist tier (Ubers, BL, BL2, etc). The only way for a Pokemon to drop a tier is for it to fail to meet the usage requirements for the tier its currently in. So instead of voting for whether or not Blaziken should be UU perhaps we should sort out whether or not it'll be allowed at all, then we can figure out whether it's OU or UU by its usage. Making a system where people (many of whom have little or no competitive experience) can vote anonymously on what tier they personally think a threat should be in will only result in a broken metagame.
User avatar
By Geodude671
#187923 Something that I didn't see in the OP until CAF mentioned it was Baton Pass. While yes, BP SB Blaziken is quite good, Baton Pass was actually not factored in at all when Blaziken was originally banned. Baton Pass was an egg move, and at the time hidden abilities could not be passed down by a father breeding with Ditto, and the only Speed Boost Torchic available was a male through an event. This meant Baton Pass and Speed Boost was, at the time, an illegal combination on the Blaziken family.

Bans should be simple. Banning Speed Boost Blaziken while allowing Blaze Blaziken unnecessarily opens a can of worms that I think we'd all rather not deal with, as I mentioned earlier. Someone in another thread mentioned banning Serperior because of Contrary (which I disagree with, but I digress). Are we going to ban Contrary on Serperior but allow Overgrow? Are we going to ban Protean Greninja while allowing Torrent? Are we going to make Telepathy Wobbuffet FU (that's the tier below PU)? What about Sand Force Landorus-I? Landorus was completely balanced before Sheer Force was legal. What about Sand Force/Mold Breaker Excadrill? We can't just put a blanket ban on these abilities either, because they're only broken on certain Pokemon. Sharpedo and Scolipede aren't broken because of Speed Boost. Spinda and Malamar aren't broken because of Contrary. Kecleon isn't broken because of Protean. Sand Rush Stoutland and Sandslash are completely balanced. Compare that to Moody, which broke even Bidoof.

Tiering Pokemon differently based on what ability they have will make the tier list too convoluted and confusing for new players. There's a reason Smogon banned Blaziken entirely instead of just banning Speed Boost Blaziken.
User avatar
By CritsAreFair
#187928
Geodude671 wrote:Tiering Pokemon differently based on what ability they have will make the tier list too convoluted and confusing for new players. There's a reason Smogon banned Blaziken entirely instead of just banning Speed Boost Blaziken.


This concept was thrown out the window following the advent of things such as the Moody ban, endless battle clause, and the Baton Pass restrictions (all of which are rulesets I supported, so I'm not complaining). While simple bans are nice and easy to learn, complex bans inherently create a more balanced and diverse metagame. It may mean more work though, so perhaps a simple tier system should be made first before worrying about complex bans.
JOIN THE TEAM