[OU Discussion] Dugtrio

[Busso]

17 minutes ago, gbwead said:

When you clean your house, you need to start with the ceiling and end with the floor. Busso just means that if the objective is to clean up OU to achieve balance you must start with top priorities like Gallade and then you can look at low priorities like Dugtrio. 

Exactly, l didn`t think it was necessary to explain the obvious.

[FlacuSkye]

22 minutes ago, gbwead said:

When you clean your house, you need to start with the ceiling and end with the floor. Busso just means that if the objective is to clean up OU to achieve balance you must start with top priorities like Gallade and then you can look at low priorities like Dugtrio. 

we would get the same result if we get done with dugtrio and then move on gallade

[gbwead]

15 minutes ago, FlacuSkye said:

we would get the same result if we get done with dugtrio and then move on gallade

That would be counterproductive and leave the floor dirty.

[FlacuSkye]

1 minute ago, gbwead said:

That would be counterproductive and leave the floor dirty.

but we can clean it too... or what's stopping us

[RysPicz]

This is a Dugtrio discussion, not Gallade.

[vaguelylistless]

6 minutes ago, RysPicz said:

This is a Dugtrio discussion, not Gallade.

Not gonna lie. I feel like all the arguments have already been made corcerning Dugtrio. It's kinda just banter now. All we are doing now is waiting for TC to come to the correct decision, which just so happens to be my opinion verbatim. 

 

 

[Ziiiiio]

Dugtrio's target is hunting thoes "perfect balance", a team which has winrate to all kinds of team. In fact it shouldn't be a problem for some teams to lose against Dugtrio 100%, if dugtrio is strong, usage tells the truth, if that team is unbreakble, traping most of the team in game, Player's winrate shows the truth. People mentioned Dugtrio team will play like a machine and win u, because u got a terrible mu, if they dont play like a machine and do useless prediction, that shows low skill.

 

To admit that this is how the game works. Always going to have a situation where you don't have a chance of winning.

Edited February 11 by Ziiiiio

[RysPicz]

13 hours ago, vaguelylistless said:

Not gonna lie. I feel like all the arguments have already been made corcerning Dugtrio. It's kinda just banter now. All we are doing now is waiting for TC to come to the correct decision, which just so happens to be my opinion verbatim. 

 

Many of those arguments were targeted at Dugtrio being unhealthy and centralizing, while it's a potential support uber and a 100% uncompetitive pokemon.

 

We have very nicely written tiering definitions and I will quote them here:

 

Spoiler

A Pokemon, move, or ability may be banned if it meets one of the following 3 classifications,  (1) Uber, (2) Unhealthy, or (3) Uncompetitive.

 

1. Uber
An uber Pokemon will naturally meet one or more of the following characteristic. The amount of characteristics met is not relevant to whether or not it is moved up.

 

1 Offensive Uber

A Pokémon that in common battle conditions, is capable of sweeping or wall breaking through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.

 

2 Defensive Uber

A Pokémon that in common battle conditions is able to wall and stall out a significant portion of the metagame with little effort or compromise.

 

3 Support Uber

A Pokémon that in common battle conditions can consistently set up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other pokemon to sweep or stall.

 

2. Unhealthy

This relates to pokemon that restrict the metagame in ways which are unfavorable for an evolving competitive metagame. In other words, a pokemon which is unhealthy is something which heavily stagnates or centralizes the metagame in a way that is problematic for a healthy metagame. Note that it has to be in a way that is problematic for a healthy metagame. This is important to note, as being centralizing is not necessarily an indicator of a pokemon being unhealthy for the metagame.

 

An unhealthy pokemon is one which makes the metagame worse with its presence, by stagnating the metagame in a large, negative way. Most pokemon which are overpowered are typically also unhealthy, but they are not entirely mutually exclusive. In general, the only time that the unhealthiness of a pokemon is evaluated is when a pokemon seems to be problematic, but simply does not fit in either of the other two categories for Ubers.

 

 

3. Uncompetitive

Moves or abilities may be banned if they are deemed uncompetitive, based on one of the following aspects.

 

Luck based:

Uncompetitive Luck based Aspects are those that create unacceptable degrees of RNG that take away autonomy for the players. What may be considered an unacceptable degree is rather subjective, so it’s important to keep in mind that there is always luck involved in Pokemon, but not every luck based aspect needs to be removed.
 

Invalidation based 

Uncompetitive Invalidation based Aspects are those that take away autonomy from players by invalidating, to an unacceptable degree, key elements of gameplay. What may be considered an unacceptable degree is rather subjective, so it’s important to keep in mind that all moves and abilities can be restrictive to a certain extent. 

 

Since there is a lot of subjectivity involved to determine what is an acceptable degree of competitiveness and what isn’t, comparative coherence through all decisions regarding competitiveness is essential.

Dugtrio by no means is an offensive or defensive uber, it cannot sweep and sure as hell it cannot wall despite having the typing and god tier bulk.

Is it a support uber, then? Can it consistently, in common battle conditions, set up a situation where other pokemons are able to sweep and stall? Maybe, very likely. In 2015, Dugtrio was banned as support uber already and back then, it didn't even have SD, sucker punch, rocks, had 80 base attack:

It was always controversial and always heavily discussed.

 

Next, is Dugtrio unhealthy? I really don't think so. An unhealthy pokemon in our metagame would be Landorus-T- it would be too good not to use and I'm pretty sure it would very quickly get around 70% usage in OU at minimum. It's impact on the metagame isn't as significant.

It surely isn't luck based. Togekiss can be luck based. Jirachi would be luck based like hell, but not Dugtrio.

Is it invalidation based? Certainly. Arena trap takes away player's autonomy by preventing switching, allowing Dugtrio an easy kill.

 

 

I didn't want to participate in this discussion anymore as I'm eagerly awaiting CNY, which I hope will shake things a little and potentially, make this whole discussion pointless, causing us to start from scratch.

Edited February 12 by RysPicz

[Godhelll]

Busso is right,

 

The subject regarding Gallade was more important and should have come before Dugtrio. In any case, fixing Dugtrio and Gallade can only do good for the health of the tier, but it is true that we cannot compare the two, Gallade is infinitely more problematic and therefore, it would be a good thing if a subject concerning Gallade was opened again, because it had been nerfed the first time with good reasons, however, the Pokemon was returned to its full power, without it being discussed with the community, while almost all players were against the return of Sharpness Gallade at 1.5 in game, sadly

 

Besides, as there is currently no open discussion anymore regarding Gallade, it's better to talk about its problematic here than nowhere

 

 

[vaguelylistless]

1 hour ago, RysPicz said:

[...]

 

Dugtrio by no means is a offensive or defensive uber, it cannot sweep and sure as hell it cannot wall despite having the typing and god tier bulk.

Is it a support uber, then? Can it consistently, in common battle conditions, set up a situation where other pokemons are able to sweep and stall? Maybe, very likely. In 2015, Dugtrio was banned as support uber already and back then, it didn't even have SD, sucker punch, rocks, had 80 base attack:

It was always controversial and always heavily discussed.

 

Next, is Dugtrio unhealthy? I really don't think so. An unhealthy pokemon in our metagame would be Landorus-T- it would be too good not to use and I'm pretty sure it would very quickly get around 70% usage in OU at minimum. It's impact on the metagame isn't as significant.

It surely isn't luck based. Togekiss can be luck based. Jirachi would be luck based like hell, but not Dugtrio.

Is it invalidation based? Certainly. Arena trap takes away player's autonomy by preventing switching, allowing Dugtrio an easy kill.

Tiering decisions are inherently subjective and as such can be argued to be manageable. Yes, Dugtrio might have been banned as a Support Uber nearly nine years ago. Times have certainly changed. OU didn't have Shaymin, the dog trio (haha, get it?) and the bird trio as we do now; legendaries that were thought to be far out of the scope of PokeMMO general philosophy to even include. Don't forget the release of Hidden Abilities and later generation parity with the addition of new items, moveset and ability updates, updated mechanics etc. Never mind being only limited to roughly 3 generations of pokemon at the time.

 

Sure Dugtrio might have new tools like 100 base attack stat (SM), Swords Dance (SV), Sucker Punch (DPP) and Stealth Rocks (DPP) but we have a better armory to withstand that slight pressure. Dugtrio, with how it is being used in both ladder and tournaments, can really only function well with magic bounce support and proper positioning within that framework, all the while facing a myriad of opposing threats.

Quote

 

• Invalidation based 
  • Uncompetitive Invalidation based Aspects are those that take away autonomy from players by invalidating, to an unacceptable degree, key elements of gameplay. What may be considered an unacceptable degree is rather subjective, so it’s important to keep in mind that all moves and abilities can be restrictive to a certain extent.

Yes, no one here denied that Arena Trap does take away one's autonomy to switch but are we really sure that it is to such an unacceptable degree? That's kind of what we have been struggling to come to an consensus about and why I even implied that we kind of exhausted the discussion around the topic. TC can either do the right thing and copy my opinion verbatim or the wrong thing and face the fury of a slightly-upset internet-denizen who has no time to start a ruckus. Either way, it will be downright catastrophic.

 

Although most people, like myself, wouldn't even mind a slight nerf to dugtrio but I would argue that even in its current state, it is quite manageable.

 

1 hour ago, RysPicz said:

[...]

 

I didn't want to participate in this discussion anymore as I'm eagerly awaiting CNY, which I hope will shake things a little and potentially, make this whole discussion pointless, causing us to start

from scratch.

Honestly, I feel quite the same. Seeing as it is coming soon^TM, CNY/LNY is likely to shake up something in the competitive scene or at least give us some time to consider which topics we ought to prioritize in the future. I would rather see arguments when the metagame has had the chance to settle with the new additions.

 

38 minutes ago, Godhelll said:

Busso is right.

 

[...]

 

Besides, as there is currently no open discussion anymore regarding Gallade, it's better to talk about its problematic here than nowhere

I have no stakes in the matter but I do find it troubling that the decision regarding a Gallade/Sharpness was kind of unceremoniously ripped from the hands of the TC/Player-base at large. But that is a discussion for another time.

Edited February 12 by vaguelylistless
spelling mistakes

[RysPicz]

10 hours ago, vaguelylistless said:

Tiering decisions are inherently subjective and as such can be argued to be manageable. Yes, Dugtrio might have been banned as a Support Uber nearly nine years ago. Times have certainly changed. OU didn't have Shaymin, the dog trio (haha, get it?) and the bird trio as we do now; legendaries that were thought to be far out of the scope of PokeMMO general philosophy to even include. Don't forget the release of Hidden Abilities and later generation parity with the addition of new items, moveset and ability updates, updated mechanics etc. Never mind being only limited to roughly 3 generations of pokemon at the time.

Tbh Dug was banned once or twice more (although one of those bans was Arena Trap ban as people started to use (successfully!) a... Diglett) but I didn't wanna go through 50+ pages of results to find those discussions. I just wanted to show that this is not a precedent and Dugtrio was a problematic pokemon ever since Arena Trap was implemented (I think it was late 2013 or early 2014).

 

I was always leaning towards eliminating as much RNG and uncompetitiveness from PokeMMO as it's only possible. I always wanted to ban evasion boosting abilities, king's rock, bright powder and other bullshit like that, I already made 72 posts over the course of 10 years about Dugtrio as well and I hope we can get rid of it once again.

[Ziiiiio]

Nerf back to 80 base atk could be a solution if we have to.

 

So dugtrio can still work on it's specific job, but lower down the range of pokemon it can trap.

 

Now with 100 atk, Rock tomb+reversal kills Rain Ludicolo, eq+reversal almost kills Garchomp, eq kills mienshao after 2 life orb damage etc 

 

With 80 atk, A sassy Tytar can predict flame thrower when dugtrio switch in, and wont killed by reversal/eq etc.

 

[Helmut]

1 hour ago, Ziiiiio said:

Nerf back to 80 base atk could be a solution if we have to.

 

So dugtrio can still work on it's specific job, but lower down the range of pokemon it can trap.

 

Now with 100 atk, Rock tomb+reversal kills Rain Ludicolo, eq+reversal almost kills Garchomp, eq kills mienshao after 2 life orb damage etc 

 

With 80 atk, A sassy Tytar can predict flame thrower when dugtrio switch in, and wont killed by reversal/eq etc.

 

The problem is not that Dug is too strong
Some people think it's uncompetitive because of its ability, not because it's too strong.

[gbwead]

56 minutes ago, Helmut said:

The problem is not that Dug is too strong
Some people think it's uncompetitive because of its ability, not because it's too strong.

Diglett and Trapinch have the same ability. They have never been viable in OU. Dugtrio's stats matter. AT alone is not enough to accomplish anything.

[Mkns1070]

Dugtrio is bad

[LeJovi]

2 hours ago, Mkns1070 said:

Dugtrio is bad

So is alcohol. Guess what? It's allowed. 

[pachima]

In here we did:

- Compare Dugtrio with Hydreigon

- State trapping and wallbreaking are only different semantically

- Imply a Pokemmo metagame works in the similar way to cleaning a house

- Discuss Gallade in a dugtrio thread, for something Dugtrio never was, ignoring semantic issues ofc (A wallbreaker)

 

Now, a Pokemon doesn't need to be massively used or incredibly good for it to be uncompetitive. There is a reason why different definitions were created regarding a Pokemon ban. Uncompetitiveness by itself isn't also a binary aspect. There are several levels to this. Some can be tolerated. Others cannot.  Togekiss is uncompetitive, but opens a significant amount of viable and common answers to play around what makes it so. Dugtrio doesn't. It existing warps the metagame around it negatively. We have seen it in NU, where the metagame was completely centralized around it, and magically opened itself as soon as it was gone. In here it is not as extreme as it was there, but we still don't have good enough tools to play around its trapping capabilities. 

Edited February 13 by pachima

[caioxlive13]

Now there's no doubt dug is broken:
  
This is a problem: Dugtrio can trap and kill a mon, and now it can bring another to 1 HP before faints. Basically, not only you need to be careful of the mon you're placing on the field, now dug can also force you to place a priority user mon on the field after he kills something because anything else would be knocked down to 1 HP only. He now gets 2 mons for the cost of 1.

Edited February 14 by caioxlive13

[Doctor]

3 minutes ago, caioxlive13 said:

Now there's no doubt dug is broken:
  
This is a problem: Dugtrio can trap and kill a mon, and now it can bring another to 1 HP before faints. Basically, not only you need to be careful of the mon you're placing on the field, now dug can also force you to place a priority user mon on the field after he kills something because anything else would be knocked down to 1 HP only. He now gets 2 mons for the cost of 1.

I guess that could work in 550 elo, yeah. Gotta be careful about Rattata as well, you never know when are they gonna hit you with that pesky Quick Attack after Endeavor.

[vaguelylistless]

46 minutes ago, caioxlive13 said:

Now there's no doubt dug is broken:
  
This is a problem: Dugtrio can trap and kill a mon, and now it can bring another to 1 HP before faints. Basically, not only you need to be careful of the mon you're placing on the field, now dug can also force you to place a priority user mon on the field after he kills something because anything else would be knocked down to 1 HP only. He now gets 2 mons for the cost of 1.

This is one of the times I will have to begrudgingly agree with caio here (and by extension, the rest of those who hold a similar stance).

 

Dugtrio learning Endeavor allows it to become far more oppressive and reduces the number of possible checks to a fraction of its current size.

 

Got a pesky bulky flying type that can easily counter or check you? Now you don't need to rely on a 100BP rock type move with a 20% chance to miss, just endeavor after trapping one of your teammates checks and get another mon free of charge!

 

Now people have a sure fire way to obtain a free kill after capitalizing on trapping a mon with something like Endeavor + Sucker Punch without risking going for EQ damage rolls. The only way one can possibly check this mon is to have a pokemon with priority to revenge kill AFTER dugtrio has already taken out one of your walls. I can already imagine the faces of the Dugtrio users that now don't have to rely on moves like Reversal to be somewhat relevant.

 

Sure, you have other arguments made that I didn't find particularly well made to justify banning Dugtrio such as pointing to past meta-games with uniquely different context as precedence for a ban but this new addition kind of pushes Duggie, and even Diglett, over the edge.

 

I have to capitulate and change my stance to move for a BAN on Dugtrio (more so the evolution line if possible) but I do want to see how people will run Dugtrio after this new move addition so don't make a decision yet.

 

 

 

 

[Sebat]

is it worth discussing about a ban/nerfing a pokemon before a big event (CNY) without knowing what new things they can implement (hidden abilities)?

[SakuyaZ]

Dugtrio with Endeavor+sub+eq+ sucker punch set is way broken imo. Please if anyone want to discuss?

Edited February 14 by SakuyaZ

[Doctor]

I can't even tell if people are joking or actually serious anymore. Endeavor is, at best, a gimmick; at worst, a wasted slot in an already pretty packed moveset. It's not broken, it's not even good, you need to play vs. a noob to be able to pull it off and the reward for trying to do it is, at most, underwhelming. I get that you want Dugtrio banned no matter what so you can spam your Tyranitars but screaming as soon as Endeavor drops on Dugtrio and treating it as if it wasn't a glorified F.E.A.R. strat is not a solid argument for any bans, sorry. I guess we should also ban Sturdy Aron + Endeavor under Sandstorm, it can kill anything omg so broken

 

Any Dugtrio set with Endeavor is giving up on a move that ACTUALLY lets it do what you are all complaining about, which is trap and kill something so its teammates have an easier game or a clear path for a sweep. You give up reversal, you no longer can hard switch into non-scarf Tyranitars to OHKO them. You give up Stealth Rock and a lot of teams that rely on Duggy to set them up (or to bypass Magic Bounce by trapping something else and setting up the rocks) have no way of getting them up consistently. You give up Stone Edge/Rock Slide/Rock Tomb and you're no longer able to check anything immune to your Earthquakes. Even Memento seems like a better option considering that, again, it helps Dug fulfill its role of an enabler.

 

You need 2 move slots for both Endeavor and Sucker Punch most of the time, and you also need to:

 

1) Be at 1HP which means your sash wasn't broken and was able to trigger and you are now praying to not get hit by any priority move.

2) Use Endeavor and somehow survive after it (your opponent's expected IQ is starting to lower already by this step)

3) Kill

 

3 entire turns of trapping something, living at 1 HP to then MAYBE take something down if your opponent doesn't eat solid food, at the cost of, well, not being able to use Dugtrio at all in any regular game. Seems super worth, yeah.

 

Now, with Scizor, Dragonite, Kabutops, Mienshao and a lot more prio users being so popular in the meta, you can't tell me that Dugtrio can cleanly take what it's supposed to take out, then your dumbass opponent is gonna switch something with no priority moves, weak to Arena Trap and slower than Dugtrio so you can happily use Endeavor on it.

 

Again, the discussion has made sense up until this point; but right now you are just stretching whatever argument you can find to get Dugtrio banned, lol

Edited February 15 by Doctor

[SakuyaZ]

4 hours ago, Doctor said:

I can't even tell if people are joking or actually serious anymore. Endeavor is, at best, a gimmick; at worst, a wasted slot in an already pretty packed moveset. It's not broken, it's not even good, you need to play vs. a noob to be able to pull it off and the reward for trying to do it is, at most, underwhelming. I get that you want Dugtrio banned no matter what so you can spam your Tyranitars but screaming as soon as Endeavor drops on Dugtrio and treating it as if it wasn't a glorified F.E.A.R. strat is not a solid argument for any bans, sorry. I guess we should also ban Sturdy Aron + Endeavor under Sandstorm, it can kill anything omg so broken

 

Any Dugtrio set with Endeavor is giving up on a move that ACTUALLY lets it do what you are all complaining about, which is trap and kill something so its teammates have an easier game or a clear path for a sweep. You give up reversal, you no longer can hard switch into non-scarf Tyranitars to OHKO them. You give up Stealth Rock and a lot of teams that rely on Duggy to set them up (or to bypass Magic Bounce by trapping something else and setting up the rocks) have no way of getting them up consistently. You give up Stone Edge/Rock Slide/Rock Tomb and you're no longer able to check anything immune to your Earthquakes. Even Memento seems like a better option considering that, again, it helps Dug fulfill its role of an enabler.

 

You need 2 move slots for both Endeavor and Sucker Punch most of the time, and you also need to:

 

1) Be at 1HP which means your sash wasn't broken and was able to trigger and you are now praying to not get hit by any priority move.

2) Use Endeavor and somehow survive after it (your opponent's expected IQ is starting to lower already by this step)

3) Kill

 

3 entire turns of trapping something, living at 1 HP to then MAYBE take something down if your opponent doesn't eat solid food, at the cost of, well, not being able to use Dugtrio at all in any regular game. Seems super worth, yeah.

 

Now, with Scizor, Dragonite, Kabutops, Mienshao and a lot more prio users being so popular in the meta, you can't tell me that Dugtrio can cleanly take what it's supposed to take out, then your dumbass opponent is gonna switch something with no priority moves, weak to Arena Trap and slower than Dugtrio so you can happily use Endeavor on it.

 

Again, the discussion has made sense up until this point; but right now you are just stretching whatever argument you can find to get Dugtrio banned, lol

Fine, but have you think of Endeavor+Final Gambit will take away any switch with non-ghost type/no priority move/no Rocky Helmet/leftover mons? Also can ask teamate to do sub+baton pass, which more safe to switch out dugtrio. 

Edited February 15 by SakuyaZ

[razimove]

6 hours ago, SakuyaZ said:

Fine, but have you think of Endeavor+Final Gambit will take away any switch with non-ghost type/no priority move/no Rocky Helmet/leftover mons? Also can ask teamate to do sub+baton pass, which more safe to switch out dugtrio. 

Pointless to think, this set is useless and derail of the actual convo. And I still feel like most of this discussion is pointless as people fail to address what 4F wrote. Which is what in fact defines if something is healthy or not.