March 2024 Movement Discussion

[VadimEmpoleon]

1 hour ago, caioxlive13 said:

There is where your argument flaws. If we've tested just 1,3x Sharpness and 1,5x Sharpness there would be valid. An argument could be done about rolls difference because 15% is a large chunk of difference. But we've tested 1,4x Sharpness. No one claimed it to be broken, if there was complains, were just about 1,4x Sharpness not being a good precedent and nothing else. 1,4x Sharpness Rolls has almost no difference with 1,5x Sharpness rolls, 6,7% is not a big difference to an argument be done in the first place . 

And i reiterate my previous argument: Gallade is a Wallbreak, you won't win walling it, you win outoffensing it. People can compare it with another recently banned wallbreaker, aka Draco Hydrei, arguing both can melt anything on their path, but before they does that, i've my own arguments to counter them. There is difference beetween both,
- One has Great bulk, are virtually untrappable, and their type and ability helps taking hits, alongside that 98 speed allows to outspeed a great portion of meta even without a scarf, allowing an resist berry like Haban, or choice specs, to be an item option.
- The other has a type that even being great offensively, is bad defensively, has a very weak bulk on one side and average on other, with the bulk in general being comparable with Flareon's one. On top of that: Gallade is easily trappable, and 80 speed is mid in OU: Either you use scarf and after a attack give free turns to opponent, which is dangerous on a Heavily offense metagaming, or you use other item and basically you only outspeed walls, and almost all offensive mons outspeed and can kill you depending of the attacks they have.

You can actually wall most of Gallade's variants with Sableye. But apart from Sableye there is probably nothing that can deal with Gallade in a reliable way. And Sableye is a mon that is probably not good enough to be used in OU for other purposes usually.

 

When it comes to "wallbreaker" definition, a wallbreaker is a mon that is capable of dealing with a large number of walls and usual cores, Lucario, Hydreigon, Conkeldurr, Volcarona, etc. are wallbreakers. These mons are good at wallbreaking but they have their own counters and can be stopped in a defensive way.

 

Gallade has very few counters and therefore it can sweep easily most of the metagame which makes it meet the offensive uber characteristic.

 

Regarding the previous situations of x1.3 and 1.4 Sharpness boosts, while it's true that there were not much complains there are many reasons for that: many people don't use the forums, bigger problems existed (Hydreigon), some people just won't want to keep discussing about the same thing again and again, Gallade's usage was lower with those boosts which made it have a lower impact in the game. Anyway that is not relevant because people are complaining now about the x1.5 Sharpness and that is what matters. Also the x1.3 and x1.4 boosts could discourage from using it, here are some examples:

 

Damage to Serperior:

Spoiler

x1.5 Sharpness: 252 Atk Life Orb Gallade Sacred Sword vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Serperior: 153-181 (101.3 - 119.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO

x1.4 Sharpness: 252 Atk Life Orb Gallade Sacred Sword vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Serperior: 142-169 (94 - 111.9%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO

x1.3 Sharpness: 252 Atk Life Orb Gallade Sacred Sword vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Serperior: 133-157 (88 - 103.9%) -- 25% chance to OHKO

Damage to Skarmory:

Spoiler

x1.5 Sharpness: 252 Atk Life Orb Gallade Sacred Sword vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Skarmory: 83-99 (48.2 - 57.5%) -- 92.2% chance to 2HKO

x1.4 Sharpness: 252 Atk Life Orb Gallade Sacred Sword vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Skarmory: 78-94 (45.3 - 54.6%) -- 49.6% chance to 2HKO

x1.3 Sharpness: 252 Atk Life Orb Gallade Sacred Sword vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Skarmory: 74-87 (43 - 50.5%) -- 3.5% chance to 2HKO

If you fail to OHKO Serperior or 2HKO Skarmory you can lose to them making Gallade not a reliable answer in those situations and therefore discouraging people from using it. More examples exist but I thought this would be enough.

 

Gallade's viability may vary depending on the team you are facing:

• When facing an offensive team Gallade can be a very useful mon due to its insane damage which allows it to OHKO many offensive mons, it can also run Choice Scarf, Assault Vest or even use Agility, this makes Gallade a very versatile mon which can be hard to predict. It can be trapped with Dugtrio or Pursuit users like Weavile, Scizor or Tyranitar. Overall it's a pretty useful mon against offensive teams but I don't think it's banworthy due to its performance against this type of teams.
• When facing balanced and defensive teams Gallade can easily get a lot of opportunities to attack and kill a mon every time it enters the field thanks to its insane damage and coverage. This forces players to run things like Dugtrio or Sableye specifically for Gallade which restricts the metagame and highly reduces the viality of some mons which is totally the opposite of what a good tier needs. By reducing the viability of this kind of teams by reducing its possibilities when it comes to teambuilding you reduce the variety in the tier and therefore make it worse. This makes Gallade meet the offensive uber characteristic.

Edited February 29 by VadimEmpoleon
Forgot to specify Sharpness boost for Skarmory's calcs

[pachima]

8 hours ago, VadimEmpoleon said:

You can actually wall most of Gallade's variants with Sableye. But apart from Sableye there is probably nothing that can deal with Gallade in a reliable way. And Sableye is a mon that is probably not good enough to be used in OU for other purposes usually.

And this is not necessarily bad. You can't expect every threat in the tier to have common answers that deal with them reliably. This shouldn't happen. When it does, it creates extremely stagnant metas centralized in the same defensive cores... (Note how I just describe OU's current state). OU is in a very toxic spot right now. Its players have grown so attached to cores that worked 2-3 years ago, and still work to this day (A few top 10 players are still using teams they had success with 2-3 years ago), that they now refuse to adapt to anything that disrupts them.

 

But I digress. Zapdos is a very solid answer to it, and I expect people to adapt this new Pokemon to better handle Gallade. Gliscor is actually decent, and while it is not a very reliable answer, it vastly helps by pressuring opposing Gallade into needlessly risks, while also maintaining a defensive pressure against it overall. 

 

9 hours ago, VadimEmpoleon said:

1- When it comes to "wallbreaker" definition, a wallbreaker is a mon that is capable of dealing with a large number of walls and usual cores, Lucario, Hydreigon, Conkeldurr, Volcarona, etc. are wallbreakers. These mons are good at wallbreaking but they have their own counters and can be stopped in a defensive way.

 

2- Gallade has very few counters and therefore it can sweep easily most of the metagame which makes it meet the offensive uber characteristic.

 

3- Regarding the previous situations of x1.3 and 1.4 Sharpness boosts, while it's true that there were not much complains there are many reasons for that: many people don't use the forums, bigger problems existed (Hydreigon), some people just won't want to keep discussing about the same thing again and again, Gallade's usage was lower with those boosts which made it have a lower impact in the game.

4- Anyway that is not relevant because people are complaining now about the x1.5 Sharpness and that is what matters. Also the x1.3 and x1.4 boosts could discourage from using it, here are some examples:

 

1- It is funny you mention Lucario and Hydreigon. You cannot actually stop any of them defensively in a reliably way, without either gambling with their set or correctly predicting what they are going to do, something very similar to what happens with Gallade currently. It is not funny you didn't mention Dragonite, because mixed Dragonite has literally no counters, nor any semi-feasible way at stopping it with a slow-defensive team. It is also interesting to note Mixed Dragonite is not even commonly used, mostly because having no counters in a meta dominated by 3 offensive threats (Scizor-Garchomp-Dnite itself) is not as big as some people claim it to be.

 

2- I agree with the premise. Gallade has very few counters. I completely disagree with its conclusion. Having no counters doesn't mean the Pokémon sweeps easily most of the metagame. This doesn't generally happen, and definitely doesn't happen with Gallade. 5 out of the 6 most used Pokemon can reliably prevent Gallade from keeping its momentum, or at the very least create a pressuring factor where Gallade is unable to come in. This by itself invalidates this conclusion, and therefore also invalidates it meeting offensive uber characteristics in the way you have presented.

 

3- Not sure where to start. First, claiming not many people use the forums is a very desperate, and yet false attempt at dismissing the argument. Lots of people use the forums. Some are more vocal than the others. If anything is an issue, you'll see several different people commenting on it. Also, you should read the bolded section of your text, and try to understand why Gallade failed to have an impact so. 

 

4- On the contrary. It is very relevant. It is the most relevant factor whatsoever in this whole discussion. In fact, outside of very few individuals, not many people are complaining about it now. They used to in the past, before the nerfs proved to them Gallade wasn't as harmful as they thought it was. Gallade is a very solid Pokémon, don't get me wrong, but we really can't be nerfing anything new that can be a threat, mostly because it suffers from the new toy syndrome. If Garchomp was to come in right now, even without SD, and attained these numbers, I can guarantee you many more people would complain about it. Either way, even unnerfed Gallade doesn't have impressive enough numbers to justify anything regarding it by themselves.

 

Either way, it is impossible to dismiss whatever happened to this Pokémon while nerfed. It wasn't used much. It wasn't complained about as much. Why? Because it wasn't good enough for it to be either used nor discussed about. Then it was buffed a bit, and it was still not good enough for any of them. This comparison IS the best metric to gauge Gallade's effectiveness in the format, and you simply cannot dismiss it.

 

Regarding the calculations you followed with. At first glance, it may seem that those probabilities's shifts between 1.4x and 1.5x are relevant, when in fact they are not. Besides the fact you'd still be relying on rolls and prediction, literally any other residual damage, including the omni present stealth rocks turns both situations into surefire KOs. In practice, you won't see much difference between the calcs you listed at 1.4x and 1.5x, and I appreciate you for actually proving my point with them. 

 

I will also take advantage of this post to mention TC, or most importantly, whoever is higher up in their hierarchy, in general. While I disagreed at first with the way Sharpness was nerfed, and while I still disagree with how the community wasn't made aware of it beforehand, in hindsight the change made it a lot easier to identify exactly how and if Gallade was/is actually an issue in the tier. Following this example for potential future nerfs is something I now would gladly hope for, but please, please please please please please, this is not something you nor anyone should tread lightly around a very small group of people. If you ever nerf something to some random value later, please inform the whole community of what you are considering to do, and how exactly you plan to do it, and what the alternatives are, so everyone else can help into creating the correct way of an eventual nerf.

 

 

Sorry for the wall of text. I would tldr, but Thinknice would kill me 😞

[Frag]

Gallade is broken and became a cancer again, hope devs do something if they want to keep people playing, coz like me, im pretty sure there are others thats gets bored when things turns shit

[YourAngst]

All i want to say is that i for one don t like how the gallade problem is treated , just like last time when gallade was disscused the main complaint was that the wall braker , wall brakes .

Yes there are some specific mons gallade brakes that other wall brakers don t that is however a given and should not be used as an arrgument against gallade , let me tell you besides the diffrence of 1.4 and 1.5 sharpness ( a diffrence that is negligible) there is not a single argument that can be used against gallade that also dosen t applay to more or less all the other wallbrakers in the game .

First of all if Sableye alone can handle evry gallade set then its more then perrfect , with acces to priority w-o-w , taunt and encore seb can be used to good success against both deffensive oriented teams and offensive oriented teams therefore seb can have a solid role in OU and not  just be there for gallade

 

Regarding the other wall brakers that also fit those ''uber offensive'' characteristics that gallade ''has'' , we have :

Nidoking , you don t check this thing deffensivly unless you have chansey/bliss and unlike gallade , nido also has acces to uitilitty moves so nido should get baned as well

 

Yanmega , as funny or stupid it may seem to some of you yanma is held back by its typeing (stelth rock) put tinted lens on it and again you don t check this deffensivly unless you have a pink blob with you , ban this as well

 

Crawdaunt , you can check this deffensivly but you need something very specific best bet being poliwrath and again useing the logic if only one pokemon can check the problem pokemon then ban the problem pokemon , bye craw

 

Mamoswine , mamo is the funy one here , unlike the other 4 here mamo dosen t have a damage boosting ability and yet it can be more problematic then all of them , better typeing offensive wise then gallade and unlike gallade an acctaul useful priority move that gives stab , why is nobody talking about mamo? Just becauuse there are rotoms and skarmorys flying around? Again unlike the gallade - sableye case there isn t a pokemon that is immune to both mamo's stabs if anything mamo should get disscused first before gallade

 

Don t get the wrong ideea i am not saing that any of the above should be baned im just pointing out that there are many pokemon that fit in the uber offensive cloak , there is no gallade sppecific arguments that has been made and dosen t applay to other wall brakers as well , also notice how  3 of them are from UU ? This alone should speak for its self just because they are not OU by usage dosen t mean they don t have the ability to do what gallade does now .

 

And one finnale thing i want to touch on is that in moments like this we should see the problem from both sides of the spectrum , we all saw and know how the metagame looked /was before gallade and then 1.5 gallade, with gallade at 1.3 and with gallade at 1.4 and this is important to know since gallade as much as is hated , keeps some very very nasty stuff in check that the other wall brakers don t , i know that offensive power creep will always stand out more and faster then deffensive power creep however assumeing everyone who complains about gallade does so because it provides an unhealty offensive power creep then we should be honest and admit that a deffensive power creep would not be healty as well  if gallade were to go now we would see a huge spike in deffenisve power creep with zapdos around , gallade needs to saty the way it is now , imho

 

 

[VadimEmpoleon]

On 2/29/2024 at 2:21 PM, pachima said:

And this is not necessarily bad. You can't expect every threat in the tier to have common answers that deal with them reliably. This shouldn't happen. When it does, it creates extremely stagnant metas centralized in the same defensive cores... (Note how I just describe OU's current state). OU is in a very toxic spot right now. Its players have grown so attached to cores that worked 2-3 years ago, and still work to this day (A few top 10 players are still using teams they had success with 2-3 years ago), that they now refuse to adapt to anything that disrupts them.

I disagree, it is bad because it restricts the teambuilding which is unhealthy for the tier, the point of having different tiers is so a bigger number of pokémon get to be used, by restricting the viability of a large number of mons in favor of a few you create the opposite effect, there are also not many reliable mons apart from Sableye that can deal with Gallade even if they are not very good in the tier. The tier has many offensive tools to deal with any defensive core, what I see in OU is that many players run the same movesets and same cores while other good movesets and cores that are as good as the most used ones are not used enough.

 

On 2/29/2024 at 2:21 PM, pachima said:

But I digress. Zapdos is a very solid answer to it, and I expect people to adapt this new Pokemon to better handle Gallade. Gliscor is actually decent, and while it is not a very reliable answer, it vastly helps by pressuring opposing Gallade into needlessly risks, while also maintaining a defensive pressure against it overall. 

While I agree that Zapdos is a decent answer to Gallade I can't agree with it being a solid one. The most optimal Zapdos spread to deal with Gallade in my opinion is this one:

 

Zapdos @ Leftovers
Timid Nature
EVs: 252 HP / 156 Def / 100 Spe

 

This spread allows Zapdos to be faster than Gallade while resisting its physical attacks and killing it with Hurricane. Now the problem is that Gallade still deals too much damage to it and can 2HKO it with Psycho Cut:

 

252 Atk Life Orb Sharpness Gallade Psycho Cut vs. 252 HP / 156 Def Zapdos: 109-130 (55.3 - 65.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

 

If Zapdos has to hit Hurricane when entering against Gallade, the Gallade's user can switch to a mon that can deal with Zapdos forcing Zapdos to leave the field without healing the damage done by Gallade putting the Zapdos's user at a disadvantage in an easy way. Apart from this, Hurricane has a 70% accuracy so it can miss, Gallade won't miss anything, if anything it will take advantage of the 12.5% of critic that Psycho Cut has and if Zapdos runs Rocky Helmet for other threats it will have a harder time dealing with Gallade because Psycho Cut ignores this.

 

It is also a good idea to run more speed and less defense or HP in Zapdos to surpass other threats like Gyarados, Toxicroak or Lucario which would turn in Zapdos getting more damage from Gallade. It is also important to note that you can give more evs to Def instead of HP to have a better physical resistance but you would sacrifice special resistance if you do it.

 

AV or Scarf Gallade can also be problematic for Zapdos if it is an Adamant Gallade:

 

252+ Atk Sharpness Gallade Psycho Cut vs. 252 HP / 156 Def Zapdos: 93-109 (47.2 - 55.3%) -- 15.2% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

 

Zapdos is also weak to Stealth Rocks.

 

On 2/29/2024 at 2:21 PM, pachima said:

1- It is funny you mention Lucario and Hydreigon. You cannot actually stop any of them defensively in a reliably way, without either gambling with their set or correctly predicting what they are going to do, something very similar to what happens with Gallade currently. It is not funny you didn't mention Dragonite, because mixed Dragonite has literally no counters, nor any semi-feasible way at stopping it with a slow-defensive team. It is also interesting to note Mixed Dragonite is not even commonly used, mostly because having no counters in a meta dominated by 3 offensive threats (Scizor-Garchomp-Dnite itself) is not as big as some people claim it to be.

Lucario, unlike Gallade, can't have the same wide coverage that Gallade has with only 4 moves. The physical one usually would need a fighting attack which usually is Close Combat, Sword Dance and Extreme Speed are very useful if you want to sweep once you setup, this leaves one extra move which is usually Ice Punch with which Lucario can defeat threats like Gliscor or Dragonite, other options are Zen Headbutt if you want to OHKO Weezing if you are running Adamant Nature (+2 252+ Atk Life Orb Lucario Zen Headbutt vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Weezing: 148-177 (86 - 102.9%) -- 18.8% chance to OHKO), Crunch to deal with threats like Reuniclus, Cofagrigus or Chandelure, Thunder Punch to deal with Gyarados and Pelipper or Meteor Mash to have a good move against everything. The Special one will usually run a special fighting move which is usually Aura Sphere, Nasty Plot, Vacuum Wave and a 4th move that is usually Dark Pulse, another useful move is Flash Cannon. There are many other options but I can't name all of them.

 

Overall, Lucario is just more manageable than Gallade is.

 

Hydreigon is usually used as a special sweeper and can be countered by Careful or Jolly AV Mienshao, Careful Conkeldurr can also do it. You can of course run other sets like DD or even use it mixed with Acrobatics to eliminate Mienshao but overall, Hydreigon is more manageable than Gallade.

 

Gallade doesn't need to choose, its sets are good against many things in the tier.

 

I didn't mention Mixed Dragonite because I just wanted to put some examples. Dragonite has counters or at least decent ways of dealing with it but I agree that it's a strong wallbreaker. I will assume the Dragonite you mean is this one:

 

Dragonite @ Life Orb / Dragon Gem
Rash Nature
Ability: Multiscale
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 SpA / 4 Spe
- Draco Meteor
- Superpower
- Flamethrower
- Extreme Speed

 

This is the extreme case of it having full Atk and SpAtk, it can be used this way but usually it will have some evs in Speed.

 

Bold Porygon2:

Spoiler

Porygon2 can stop it if Dragonite has Multiscale and Porygon2 has Trace and full HP with no hazards which may sound very specific but it's not:

 

With Multiscale not activated:

252+ SpA Life Orb Dragonite Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Eviolite Porygon2: 94-110 (48.9 - 57.2%) -- 94.9% chance to 2HKO

252 Atk Life Orb Dragonite Superpower vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Porygon2: 94-112 (48.9 - 58.3%) -- 95.3% chance to 2HKO

 

With Multiscale activated:

252+ SpA Life Orb Dragonite Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Eviolite Multiscale Porygon2: 47-55 (24.4 - 28.6%) -- 99.2% chance to 4HKO

252 Atk Life Orb Dragonite Superpower vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Multiscale Porygon2: 47-56 (24.4 - 29.1%) -- 99.2% chance to 4HKO

 

AV Amoonguss:

 

Spoiler

Amoonguss can tank some hits from Dragonite and then switch but it can't deal with it on its own:

 

252+ SpA Life Orb Dragonite Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Amoonguss: 75-90 (33.9 - 40.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

252+ SpA Life Orb Dragonite Flamethrower vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Amoonguss: 70-83 (31.6 - 37.5%) -- 84.8% chance to 3HKO

252 Atk Life Orb Dragonite Extreme Speed vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Amoonguss: 81-96 (36.6 - 43.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

 

0 SpA Amoonguss Sludge Bomb vs. 0 HP / 0- SpD Dragonite: 51-60 (30.7 - 36.1%) -- 41% chance to 3HKO

252 Atk Amoonguss Foul Play vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Dragonite: 58-69 (34.9 - 41.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Suicune:

Spoiler

Suicune can resist 2 hits from Dragonite but it's not the best answer to it:

 

252+ SpA Life Orb Dragonite Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Suicune: 118-140 (57 - 67.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252 Atk Life Orb Dragonite Superpower vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Suicune: 60-71 (28.9 - 34.2%) -- 99.9% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

Careful Gliscor:

Spoiler

Without having its SpAtk lowered:

252+ SpA Life Orb Dragonite Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Gliscor: 114-136 (62.6 - 74.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Poison Heal

252+ SpA Life Orb Dragonite Flamethrower vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Gliscor: 53-64 (29.1 - 35.1%) -- 1% chance to 4HKO after Poison Heal

 

With lowered SpAtk:

-2 252+ SpA Life Orb Dragonite Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Gliscor: 58-70 (31.8 - 38.4%) -- 85.5% chance to 4HKO after Poison Heal

-2 252+ SpA Life Orb Dragonite Flamethrower vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Gliscor: 27-32 (14.8 - 17.5%) -- possibly the worst move ever

 

It can survive in most cases but it has a chance to be killed with 2 Draco Meteor, the Dragon Gem variant can't be stopped with Gliscor.

In my opinion it's not as dangerous as Gallade is.

 

After discussing all these mons I have to say that I am not disccusing Gallade because I chose to do it randomly or something, I really find it overwhelming in OU, we can do comparations but my answer will be the same.

On 2/29/2024 at 2:21 PM, pachima said:

2- I agree with the premise. Gallade has very few counters. I completely disagree with its conclusion. Having no counters doesn't mean the Pokémon sweeps easily most of the metagame. This doesn't generally happen, and definitely doesn't happen with Gallade. 5 out of the 6 most used Pokemon can reliably prevent Gallade from keeping its momentum, or at the very least create a pressuring factor where Gallade is unable to come in. This by itself invalidates this conclusion, and therefore also invalidates it meeting offensive uber characteristics in the way you have presented.

You are right, I used a term that didn't reflect correctly what I wanted to say (and I mean "sweep"), what I want to say is that by having no counters and having a very high attack it can delete a mon easily if it has the opportunity and in my opinion it can get a opportunity easily. And you are right that Garchomp, Scizor, Dragonite and other mons can pressure it but I still find that it can get an opportunity easily against other mons that also have a high usage.

 

Spoiler

3- Not sure where to start. First, claiming not many people use the forums is a very desperate, and yet false attempt at dismissing the argument. Lots of people use the forums. Some are more vocal than the others. If anything is an issue, you'll see several different people commenting on it. Also, you should read the bolded section of your text, and try to understand why Gallade failed to have an impact so. 

Again I didn't use the right term and I apologize, what I wanted to say is that the amount of people who comment and share their opinion when  it comes to competitive aspects of the game (at least when it comes to OU) is underwhelming compared to the amount of people who play OU. I don't have numbers but that's how I see it. Anyway this is just one of the factors that I believe were relevant to justify the lack of complains, not the whole reason.

 

On 2/29/2024 at 2:21 PM, pachima said:

4- On the contrary. It is very relevant. It is the most relevant factor whatsoever in this whole discussion. In fact, outside of very few individuals, not many people are complaining about it now. They used to in the past, before the nerfs proved to them Gallade wasn't as harmful as they thought it was. Gallade is a very solid Pokémon, don't get me wrong, but we really can't be nerfing anything new that can be a threat, mostly because it suffers from the new toy syndrome. If Garchomp was to come in right now, even without SD, and attained these numbers, I can guarantee you many more people would complain about it. Either way, even unnerfed Gallade doesn't have impressive enough numbers to justify anything regarding it by themselves.

I have to disagree, I believe you consider it relevant because you consider x1.3 and x1.4 boosts far from being banworthy justifying it with lack of complains and a low usage during that time but I have to disagree, I can only speak for myself when it comes to the x1.3 and x1.4 boosts. When it was nerfed to x1.3 boost its usage was very low but I never thought it was weak, I actually think it was still one of the strongest wallbreakers but I didn't consider it banworthy. Then it was buffed to x1.4 boost and I found it banworthy again, I believe a Jolly natured Gallade is banworthy with a x1.5 boost but I don't consider the speed the nature gives very relevant in the tier so Adamant nature is also a very good option, Adamant Gallade with x1.4 boost reaches the same damage and higher that a x1.5 boost Jolly Gallade can do.

 

Regarding the lack of complains and usage, apart from all the reasons I stated before I want to add some other ones that I consider relevant:

• It is possible to check in the game that Gallade's usage was getting higher and higher every month during the x1.4 Sharpness, I consider that many people immediately thought Gallade was not worth using after the nerf without even trying it and then realized how it was still a good mon.
• Personally, I didn't even bother commenting about Gallade during the x1.4 boost because I found Hydreigon much stronger so I wanted Draco Meteor Hydreigon to be banned first.

And like I said before, I don't think the complains that we have right now should be ignored just because there were lack of complains or a low usage in the past, what happens now is what really matters. Also everything will be banworthy at some point if you increase its damage so a limit that determines if it is banworthy or not exists.

 

On 2/29/2024 at 2:21 PM, pachima said:

Regarding the calculations you followed with. At first glance, it may seem that those probabilities's shifts between 1.4x and 1.5x are relevant, when in fact they are not. Besides the fact you'd still be relying on rolls and prediction, literally any other residual damage, including the omni present stealth rocks turns both situations into surefire KOs. In practice, you won't see much difference between the calcs you listed at 1.4x and 1.5x, and I appreciate you for actually proving my point with them. 

I wouldn't say these calculations are irrelevant, I also wouldn't say they are very relevant but they for sure can discourage people from using Gallade with a lower Sharpness multiplier, like I said before you can use Adamant Gallade instead of a Jolly one and do more damage with a x1.4 Sharpness that you would do with a Jolly x1.5 Sharpness and I find it banworthy. Everything related to usage and complains that x1.4 and x1.5 multipliers being similar implies was already answered before in this comment.

 

This said, I can't guarantee I will keep discussing this because I am not even sure if Gallade can be banned again so this may be worthless, there is a lack of communication. And afterall I don't care that much if it gets banned or not and I don't like OU anyway.

 

Many of the things I stated in this comment are subjective so feel free to agree/disagree with it and share your opinion here so more players can have a better look at the different aspects of Gallade in OU.

 

I am sorry for a even bigger wall of text @pachima but I thought it is better to say everything to discuss it properly. Thanks everyone for reading.

 

Edit: Something I forgot to mention but wanted to is that Gallade is usually paired with Hydreigon which is a good counter for Sableye restricting the teambuilding even more because you need to worry about Hydreigon too.

Edited March 1 by VadimEmpoleon

[Ziiiiio]

I suggest Ban Sacred Sword, let Gallade force to go cc, and keep sharpness 1.5.

 

Pursuit have less pressure on prediction, easier to get revenge kill. Priority move hits more to gallade as well, spetially scarf gallade tring to sweep the game.

 

SD life orb cc can not kill hippowdon, Gallade force to run leaf blade.

 

And if gallade run leaf blade rather than night slash, Acid armor Reuniclus checks it, Gallde was not rely on night slash to kill Reuniclus cz Sacred sword ignore Acid armor, cc can not do that.

 

The idea is let gallade can not cover everything, a bit limitation on that, and not too much.

 

 

 

 

[caioxlive13]

1 hour ago, Ziiiiio said:

Pursuit have less pressure on prediction, easier to get revenge kill. Priority move hits more to gallade as well, spetially scarf gallade tring to sweep the game.

Actually, it already hit hard. I yesterday was battling, faced gallade in 2 of 8 matches. One was an agility set, tried to hard switch and setup into a Nite(Multiscale broken) and loses. I could give 2 hits with E-speed and kill with scizor, but i needed just e-speeds with a Crit help. (And i didn't used DD because since multiscale was broken i couldn't setup without risking of get killed and i wouldn't risk another mon, so i'd trade my nite for enough dmg to kill Gallade easily later, than get killed for nothing.) Other was a traditional Scarf set: He used leaf blade vs my Suicune(I had a subs so i stayed and tried to fish a scald burn, didn't ;-; ) and he has just enough speed to outspeed a Adamant 80s. Suspected about scarf so switched away into a mon able to resist and in fact it was. I take the locking opportunity all the times and forced him to sac something to keep gallade alive, until he couldn't. Won on that way. Based on my experience, i didn't face too much problems vs a Gallade. Conkeldurr gives me more headache than Gallade.

Edited March 1 by caioxlive13

[pachima]

1 hour ago, VadimEmpoleon said:

I am sorry for a even bigger wall of text @pachima but I thought it is better to say everything to discuss it properly. Thanks everyone for reading.

My pleasure. I appreciate someone taking the effort to actually go through. 

There are a few things I guess we can just agree to disagree, and that is fine. One or two I actually disagree and will discuss upon it, and a few I'll have to give it to you. Let me try to make it simple.

 

1 hour ago, VadimEmpoleon said:

I disagree, it is bad because it restricts the teambuilding which is unhealthy for the tier, the point of having different tiers is so a bigger number of pokémon get to be used, by restricting the viability of a large number of mons in favor of a few you create the opposite effect, there are also not many reliable mons apart from Sableye that can deal with Gallade even if they are not very good in the tier. The tier has many offensive tools to deal with any defensive core, what I see in OU is that many players run the same movesets and same cores while other good movesets and cores that are as good as the most used ones are not used enough.

This is the part I disagree with the most, and it is very easy to understand why by comparing OU with UU and NU. OU is very stagnant, and the same defensive cores are used and abused. When spectating UU and NU, games are usually much more diverse despite the fact it is far more common to have unbalanced shifts in those tiers. Having un unbalanced metagame doesn't correlate to having a restricted metagame. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesnt, and NU is a very good example of why so. 

 

I bolded something that I believe highlights a misconception about competitive Pokémon in general. I feel people are unable to manipulate the field in order to pressure opposing threats. They feel they can simply react to their moves, by simply clicking the "counter" to whatever they play. This unfortunately has lasted for far too long in a format that for some reason kept encouraging this. This is not playing Pokémon, despite whatever some stall players will tell you. Even stall can't be reactive. If it can, then there is something extremely wrong with the format within. 

 

You need to be both reactive and proactive. When it comes to wallbreakers, you cannot think: Oh, I need to stop this. No, you need to think: I need to prevent the opposing team from being in a position where I am forced to stop it. Sometimes you can't do this either because the Pokémon is too strong, or because the format has not enough tools for it. In these cases, said Pokémon should be evaluated. This is not the case in OU, where most common Pokémon can actually handle with Gallade. 

 

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, VadimEmpoleon said:

 

While I agree that Zapdos is a decent answer to Gallade I can't agree with it being a solid one. The most optimal Zapdos spread to deal with Gallade in my opinion is this one:

 

Zapdos @ Leftovers
Timid Nature
EVs: 252 HP / 156 Def / 100 Spe

 

Zapdos is also weak to Stealth Rocks.

It is solid not in the sense of countering, but in the sense of being a defensive Pokémon that can both prevent Gallade from entering, force Gallade out AND force Gallade to risk a very non-spammable move if it wants to catch it on the switch. That's solid enough for me. 

 

Zapdos can run brave bird to guarantee the KO, if needed. In a defensive variant, you are really not using the extra hurricane power at all. 

 

Regardless, again, I feel this is a mentality thing rather than a objective and simplistic view of counters and checks. Either way, I agree what you said when claiming Zapdos shouldnt simply be added in a team that is already weak to Gallade, expecting it to magically solve the problem. 

 

I deffinitely agree with the bolded part, tho, which can neuter the bird pretty easily.

 

1 hour ago, VadimEmpoleon said:

 

Lucario, unlike Gallade, can't have the same wide coverage that Gallade has with only 4 moves. The physical one usually would need a fighting attack which usually is Close Combat, Sword Dance and Extreme Speed are very useful if you want to sweep once you setup, this leaves one extra move which is usually Ice Punch with which Lucario can defeat threats like Gliscor or Dragonite, other options are Zen Headbutt if you want to OHKO Weezing if you are running Adamant Nature (+2 252+ Atk Life Orb Lucario Zen Headbutt vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Weezing: 148-177 (86 - 102.9%) -- 18.8% chance to OHKO), Crunch to deal with threats like Reuniclus, Cofagrigus or Chandelure, Thunder Punch to deal with Gyarados and Pelipper or Meteor Mash to have a good move against everything. The Special one will usually run a special fighting move which is usually Aura Sphere, Nasty Plot, Vacuum Wave and a 4th move that is usually Dark Pulse, another useful move is Flash Cannon. There are many other options but I can't name all of them.

 

Overall, Lucario is just more manageable than Gallade is.

Lucario IS more manageable than Gallade. I agree. When it comes to purely wallbreaking tho, I considered the set: Flash Cannon - CC - Tpunch - Ipunch. It is very hard, nigh impossible to reliably entering on it with a very defensive team, which was my argument. Before anyone claims I added no priority, Gallade doesn't use it either so that point would be moot. But yes, Lucario usually prefers running priority, mostly because just how better having an extra answer to offense is than to purely relying on it to break cores. 

On the other hand, Zapdos is much more solid against Lucario than against Gallade, so there is that.

 

 

1 hour ago, VadimEmpoleon said:

 

Hydreigon is usually used as a special sweeper and can be countered by Careful or Jolly AV Mienshao, Careful Conkeldurr can also do it. You can of course run other sets like DD or even use it mixed with Acrobatics to eliminate Mienshao but overall, Hydreigon is more manageable than Gallade.

 

Hydreigon is tricky. While it is slightly easier to switch against it the first time, it also doesn't need to predict much, and most importantly, it can enter the field far more often than Gallade can, putting the enemy in a position where it simply cannot outgrind its presence with the few counters to it. (See? Pokémon is complex.)

 

 

1 hour ago, VadimEmpoleon said:

I didn't mention Mixed Dragonite because I just wanted to put some examples. Dragonite has counters or at least decent ways of dealing with it but I agree that it's a strong wallbreaker. I will assume the Dragonite you mean is this one:

 

Dragonite @ Life Orb / Dragon Gem
Rash Nature
Ability: Multiscale
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 SpA / 4 Spe
- Draco Meteor
- Superpower
- Flamethrower
- Extreme Speed

 

This is the extreme case of it having full Atk and SpAtk, it can be used this way but usually it will have some evs in Speed.

 

Bold Porygon2:

  Hide contents

 

AV Amoonguss:

 

  Hide contents

 

Suicune:

  Hide contents

 

 

  Hide contents

 

In my opinion it's not as dangerous as Gallade is.

 

This was not the set I considered also, but for this point in particular it is irrelevant. I don't consider calculating without rocks a wise choice simply because it is far too easy to keep pressure on those rocks in the tier. But I can get behind the argument, despite disagreeing with it, and it is just one of those things where I will simply choose agree to disagree.

 

On the other hand, AV Amoonguss and/or careful Gliscor was something I overlooked, and I am willing to give that to you.

 

 

1 hour ago, VadimEmpoleon said:

I have to disagree, I believe you consider it relevant because you consider x1.3 and x1.4 boosts far from being banworthy justifying it with lack of complains and a low usage during that time but I have to disagree, I can only speak for myself when it comes to the x1.3 and x1.4 boosts. When it was nerfed to x1.3 boost its usage was very low but I never thought it was weak, I actually think it was still one of the strongest wallbreakers but I didn't consider it banworthy. Then it was buffed to x1.4 boost and I found it banworthy again, I believe a Jolly natured Gallade is banworthy with a x1.5 boost but I don't consider the speed the nature gives very relevant in the tier so Adamant nature is also a very good option, Adamant Gallade with x1.4 boost reaches the same damage and higher that a x1.5 boost Jolly Gallade can do.

 

Regarding the lack of complains and usage, apart from all the reasons I stated before I want to add some other ones that I consider relevant:

• It is possible to check in the game that Gallade's usage was getting higher and higher every month during the x1.4 Sharpness, I consider that many people immediately thought Gallade was not worth using after the nerf without even trying it and then realized how it was still a good mon.
• Personally, I didn't even bother commenting about Gallade during the x1.4 boost because I found Hydreigon much stronger so I wanted Draco Meteor Hydreigon to be banned first.

And like I said before, I don't think the complains that we have right now should be ignored just because there were lack of complains or a low usage in the past, what happens now is what really matters. Also everything will be banworthy at some point if you increase its damage so a limit that determines if it is banworthy or not exists.

 

This will be a double-edged sword.

First, I disagree what you said, or at least with the reasonings you have given to me: It is inconceivable people would stop arguing if the Pokémon in question wouldn't be still broken. We had countless examples where in the past, people wouldn't stop complaining just because something moved up/down to justify another unbalanced format. 

 

Second, I never said Gallade at 1.3x or 1.4x was weak. It simply broke people's perceptions of how good it actually was. It shattered its new toy syndrome, while sadly creating a "nerf" syndrome, in where people tend to use nerfed Pokemon less despite how good they are. (More on this soon)(tm)

 

Third. No, we shouldn't ignore complains now, but we deffinitely should try to understand why those complains suddenly were missing until now, which revolves back to the point I made yesterday.

 

 

Finally, and because you made the effort to post this, I will help you for your own argument, highlighting the bold part. That sentence can open a new premise. Pokemmo has a very very very (very) slow adaptation process, and it is actually possible the buffs fell upon Gallade too quickly, not giving players enough time to adapt to it, as well as to shatter the nerf syndrome. 

You said Gallade increased its usage. Maybe, if the test lasted longer, it could have reached high enough numbers to shut down my argument. Maybe not. We cannot know. I can accept this, and I felt it would be good pointing this out for TC to evaluate everything properly and as less biasely as possible.

 

TLDR; Overall, Gallade abuses cores people were used to play with. This is not unhealthy at all, but most just refuse to adapt. Analyzing OU's usages, we could have seen how much the format changed when Rotom-Wash was added, destroying Hippowdon's and skarmory's usage. We could have seen Garchomp skyrocketing Weavile's usage. A pokémon that was in UU for a long time before it), and how much it increased Starmie's usage, which was heavily declining until then. We could have seen Serperior dropping Rotom-Wash severely. It is very easy to understand how much a problematic Pokémon can shift its format, and yet, Gallade hasn't done any of this in any significant way. (Sabaleye rising a few points isnt significant, not when compared to past shifts). On the other hand, it is possible that not enough time was given to OU to adapt to its nerfed variants, which may or may not impact its validation within the tier. 

 

 

 

[caioxlive13]

See @Doctor ? That's the type of argument i'd like to read from you before. You just claimed Gallade is broken because of the ban done months ago, when the mon was even like described by Pachima, a "case of New Toy Syndrome". Didn't provide calcs or anything important. VadimEmpoleon provided. 

Also, @VadimEmpoleon you said as one of your arguments that Gallade on 1,3x Sharpness or 1,4x Sharpness could be broken but people doesn't want to complain. Well, if a thing is broken then people will complain until that's no longer the case. If there is a nerf and it doesn't work, people would still complain. 
An example of it happening, was the KR Ban. They "nerfed" it forcing the Hax item to be revealed once their holder steps on the field. The nerf didn't do anything. Helped the 1% that uses the answers for KR Cloyster and Weavile, but that's it. After this nerf there was a wave of complains, and They had to nerf it again effectively killing the strat for the good of the meta.

Edited March 2 by caioxlive13

[VadimEmpoleon]

26 minutes ago, caioxlive13 said:

Well, if a thing is broken then people will complain until that's no longer the case. If there is a nerf and it doesn't work, people would still complain. 

I agree but there could be exceptions for different reasons, I personally didn't discuss anything about the x1.4 Sharpness boost even though I found it overwhelming because I wanted Draco Meteor Hydreigon to be the main focus.

[VadimEmpoleon]

4 hours ago, pachima said:

I bolded something that I believe highlights a misconception about competitive Pokémon in general. I feel people are unable to manipulate the field in order to pressure opposing threats. They feel they can simply react to their moves, by simply clicking the "counter" to whatever they play. This unfortunately has lasted for far too long in a format that for some reason kept encouraging this. This is not playing Pokémon, despite whatever some stall players will tell you. Even stall can't be reactive. If it can, then there is something extremely wrong with the format within. 

 

You need to be both reactive and proactive. When it comes to wallbreakers, you cannot think: Oh, I need to stop this. No, you need to think: I need to prevent the opposing team from being in a position where I am forced to stop it. Sometimes you can't do this either because the Pokémon is too strong, or because the format has not enough tools for it. In these cases, said Pokémon should be evaluated.

I completely agree with this, as player that usually plays balanced teams and can't stop every single mon defensively I need to prevent some situations from happening in the field. Many aspects are important like hazards, the HP % of your mons, etc.

 

5 hours ago, pachima said:

This is not the case in OU, where most common Pokémon can actually handle with Gallade. 

I can't agree with this though. I believe Gallade can get a lot of opportunities in OU against walls, special sweepers and slower physical sweepers:

• Walls: Chansey, Porygon2, Blissey, Rotom-W (with specific sets/items), Reuniclus, Amoonguss, Ferrothorn
• Special Sweepers: Gengar (only with AV), Starmie, Espeon, Infernape (It can use U-Turn and therefore do something at least), Magnezone (It can use Volt Switch), Serperior, Chandelure (with AV and in specific conditions), Hydreigon (It can use U-Turn), Volcarona (in specific conditions).
• Physical Sweepers: Scizor (only if Scizor holds CB and is locked in a move that is not Bullet Punch), Tyranitar (needs to be careful with the Scarf Tyranitar variant), Breloom (needs to be careful with possible Focus Sash), Infernape (It can use U-Turn), Lucario, Mamoswine (needs to be careful with possible Focus Sash), Conkeldurr, Mienshao (It can use U-Turn)

Apart from these there are slower mons that can kill Gallade or faster ones that can survive at least one hit from Gallade that would lose to Gallade after a low HP loss. This list can change a lot depending on many factors, it would also be very different for Scarf Gallade variant. I believe this allows Gallade to get a lot of opportunities to come into the field. It is true though that mons with a high usage like Garchomp, Dragonite or Pelipper can prevent it from coming into the field. I guess we can't agree on this one which is fine.

 

About Zapdos, I agree with everything, I didn't mention Brave Bird because I consider Hurricane to be much useful against other mons that are not Gallade in the tier but it's true that it shouldn't be overlooked.

5 hours ago, pachima said:

I don't consider calculating without rocks a wise choice simply because it is far too easy to keep pressure on those rocks in the tier. But I can get behind the argument, despite disagreeing with it, and it is just one of those things where I will simply choose agree to disagree.

You are right about this one, rocks are very relevant in OU because many matches have rocks in the field. I am just that player that can run up to 3 Defog or Stealth Rocks mons so I usually don't care about rocks and I overlooked it.

 

5 hours ago, pachima said:

It shattered its new toy syndrome, while sadly creating a "nerf" syndrome, in where people tend to use nerfed Pokemon less despite how good they are.

Completely agree on this one and I believe it is really important.

 

5 hours ago, pachima said:

Overall, Gallade abuses cores people were used to play with. This is not unhealthy at all, but most just refuse to adapt. Analyzing OU's usages, we could have seen how much the format changed when Rotom-Wash was added, destroying Hippowdon's and skarmory's usage. We could have seen Garchomp skyrocketing Weavile's usage. A pokémon that was in UU for a long time before it), and how much it increased Starmie's usage, which was heavily declining until then. We could have seen Serperior dropping Rotom-Wash severely. It is very easy to understand how much a problematic Pokémon can shift its format, and yet, Gallade hasn't done any of this in any significant way. (Sabaleye rising a few points isnt significant, not when compared to past shifts). On the other hand, it is possible that not enough time was given to OU to adapt to its nerfed variants, which may or may not impact its validation within the tier. 

It is true that Gallade didn't have a big impact in the usage of other mons in the tier. I personally don't like limiting myself to use Sableye (if it had another answer apart from Sableye that is more viable in the tier I would probably use it more but I find Sableye underwhelming to use it in a lot of teams) when playing balanced/stall teams so I just add more mons that can prevent it from coming into the field (I did the same thing with Hydreigon). When playing offensive teams I don't think Gallade is a big issue so it is not a big factor when teambuilding. This makes Gallade a bigger issue for balanced/stall teams and I think those types of teams are not used as much as offensive ones in OU (I don't have numbers so I can't confirm it but I believe it is this way). If those teams have lower usage it is expected that the tier will change less with Gallade's presence.

 

5 hours ago, pachima said:

OU is very stagnant, and the same defensive cores are used and abused. When spectating UU and NU, games are usually much more diverse despite the fact it is far more common to have unbalanced shifts in those tiers. Having un unbalanced metagame doesn't correlate to having a restricted metagame. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesnt, and NU is a very good example of why so. 

And finally, I left this for last one because I couldn't understand it at first but now I do. It is true that UU and NU games are much more diverse despite having unbalanced shifts. The thing is that I find the mons that are in those tiers more manageable. It is also important to note that many players if a mon is very strong but has a low usage will ignore and or at least won't give it much attention (for example they would run something that can stop it from sweeping but will not a run a solid answer to it), this happens with Togekiss in OU, it happens with Sigilyph, Crawdaunt, Mismagius in UU and there are many other examples. Another important factor is the difference in the playerbase between OU and lower tiers, many new players start in OU and they would usually use standard teams to get used to the competitive scene which results in less variety in the tier, I also think that the number of viable mons in OU is lower than in UU or NU.

 

I may have missed something or didn't include everything I wanted to, I had my comment deleted after finishing it because I hit "Submit Reply" but didn't realize I had no connection so I had to write everything again :(.

[Doctor]

2 hours ago, caioxlive13 said:

See @Doctor ? That's the type of argument i'd like to read from you before. You just claimed Gallade is broken because of the ban done months ago, when the mon was even like described by Pachima, a "case of New Toy Syndrome". Didn't provide calcs or anything important. VadimEmpoleon provided. 

Also, @VadimEmpoleon you said as one of your arguments that Gallade on 1,3x Sharpness or 1,4x Sharpness could be broken but people doesn't want to complain. Well, if a thing is broken then people will complain until that's no longer the case. If there is a nerf and it doesn't work, people would still complain. 
An example of it happening, was the KR Ban. They "nerfed" it forcing the Hax item to be revealed once their holder steps on the field. The nerf didn't do anything. Helped the 1% that uses the answers for KR Cloyster and Weavile, but that's it. After this nerf there was a wave of complains, and They had to nerf it again effectively killing the strat for the good of the meta.

caio can you please stop mentioning me and get over it already, I have already stated that there's no use in trying to prove anything to you as you don't care to read any argument that doesn't resonate with whatever you made up your mind on, like you just went on and proved by mentioning Vadim dismissing everything he said and proceeded to once more talk about King's Rock Cloyster

Edited March 2 by Doctor

[OrangeManiac]

The fact people are even talking about 1,3x / 1,4x Sharpness already shows the kind of awful precedent this has set for competitive discussions, instead of agreeing that arbitrarily throwing a random number is just fundamentally a bad idea.

 

Edit: Ok fine, I'll elaborate this a bit further. Why do we must insist Gallade has to be an OU Pokemon no matter what? I have no opinion whether Gallade in OU is too much, I'm not too deep in the metagame to have a good opinion about that. This whole conversation to me just seems stupid. One day, the devs just decided we are going to give Gallade Sharpness. Maybe for their great surprise, OU metagame was not quite ready for that power and coverage just like that. If we are to decide that Gallade with Sharpness is too much for the game, why can't we revert back to the time when Gallade didn't get Sharpness? We already decided we are not going to update everything (looking at you 90 power Outrage). The problem for devs has always been "nothing should be out of use in competitive play". Removing Sharpness from Gallade would still allow Gallade to do its old usual thing in NU.

 

So, can someone explain to me why do we need Gallade in the OU tier? The point of topic seems to be is Gallade too strong or not. If it is, remove Sharpness from it. If it isn't, leave it as it is. I've already disliked when we need to forcefully keep Pokemon from going Ubers, with SD Garchomp and Draco Hydreigon. But at least, with those Pokemon the question is "Does this solve a problem, yes or no?". With Gallade, the question isn't currently "yes or no", it is "how much?". And from tiering discussion point of view, question of "how much" is just an awful discussion to have. You can move the goalposts pretty much endlessly in that discussion and there's never going to be an agreed multiplier where Gallade is supposedly okay for everybody. Also doing such weird numerical adjustments for things opens up a whole can of worms, especially if there ever is going to be another thing supposedly broken. How are we going to numerically adjust multiple points of discussion at the same time?

 

 

Edited March 2 by OrangeManiac

[caioxlive13]

22 hours ago, pachima said:

TLDR; Overall, Gallade abuses cores people were used to play with.

 

This is a frequent case on OU and still an issue we had to adress yet. People claim things were broken but didn't give time to adapt. For the enragment of Doctor, i'm using again an old thing that happened, to give an example to my argument:

- Serperior was claimed to be broken back in July 2022, but the cores back in the time was super weak to grass because we didn't have good grass offensive ones back in the day. We had Breloom but before technician it was struggling to be on OU. Almost fall after october but ended up saved by their HA. Remaining offensive grass-types pre-ha were genuinely bad, and that make most mons didn't care to have that weakness. Why i'm talking about that discussion? Because apart from Nite Multiscale and Chandelure Infiltrator, nothing changed about serperior or who are their counters when it was claimed to be broken(July-October 2022) and when it wasn't anymore(October-Early December 2022), the counters we had back in that time and the counters we had today +2, were the same we had on those days. 4 mons is not enough to change a mon from broken to acceptable, neither 2 are, yet Serperior escaped the ban.

Edited March 2 by caioxlive13

[GodobitoFF]

El punto es que por lo visto todos deseamos un nerfeo de gallade o un ban en singles y solo que se use en dubs como garchomp @Munya ya atiende la petición que llevamos pidiendo hace un mes

[JurassicMick]

12 hours ago, caioxlive13 said:

This is a frequent case on OU and still an issue we had to adress yet. People claim things were broken but didn't give time to adapt. For the enragment of Doctor, i'm using again an old thing that happened, to give an example to my argument:

- Serperior was claimed to be broken back in July 2022, but the cores back in the time was super weak to grass because we didn't have good grass offensive ones back in the day. We had Breloom but before technician it was struggling to be on OU. Almost fall after october but ended up saved by their HA. Remaining offensive grass-types pre-ha were genuinely bad, and that make most mons didn't care to have that weakness. Why i'm talking about that discussion? Because apart from Nite Multiscale and Chandelure Infiltrator, nothing changed about serperior or who are their counters when it was claimed to be broken(July-October 2022) and when it wasn't anymore(October-Early December 2022), the counters we had back in that time and the counters we had today +2, were the same we had on those days. 4 mons is not enough to change a mon from broken to acceptable, neither 2 are, yet Serperior escaped the ban.

Have you ever heard about Sap Sipper? A lot of ppl figured how to use lower tier mons for this. Weezing is also a great alternative and you can adjust your EV distribution to get some hits comfy. Crobat is able too check it too. Priority users like Mamoswine o Weavile can check it too. I don't know why are you bringing Serperior over and over when there are multiple approaches to deal with it already. Weather are able to take it down too. Another point I think we might consider is how you can actually pp stall it with some cores since leaf storm has a really low amount of pp.

 

Those are just a few things I can think of to check Serperior so there might be more. Serperior is scary, yeah but you have the tools to deal with it. Gallade is different and there's enough evidence about it. Now if you want to ignore those and keep going into randoms topics that's another issue

[caioxlive13]

6 hours ago, JurassicMick said:

Have you ever heard about Sap Sipper? A lot of ppl figured how to use lower tier mons for this. Weezing is also a great alternative and you can adjust your EV distribution to get some hits comfy. Crobat is able too check it too. Priority users like Mamoswine o Weavile can check it too. I don't know why are you bringing Serperior over and over when there are multiple approaches to deal with it already. Weather are able to take it down too. Another point I think we might consider is how you can actually pp stall it with some cores since leaf storm has a really low amount of pp.

I was talking that the tools we had, considering only commonly used ones. The ones we had back when it was released and the ones we had today changed only a bit. Chandelure(Even w/o Infiltrator can still check it, infiltrator maked it better), Volcarona, Weezing, Weavile.... Nowadays on commonly used we had Multiscale Nite, and Mamoswine too. I'm not even considering Zapdos or Amongus Regen because people already accepted Serperior in the meta prior to their releases.  People just refused to adapt back then, and the same was done either to Gallade or some of their Nerfed variants. People doesn't want to adapt to them.(And for the nerfed variants, it was also devs's fault to not give us enough time to adapt too). I mentioned serperior since it was a fresh example of how people doesn't want to adapt to a mon. They would've banned serperior if the 3rd Anniversary Update didn't introduced 60+ HAs and forced people to let serperior for more time to see if any new toy could handle it.

Edited March 3 by caioxlive13

[INeedHelp3000]

6 hours ago, JurassicMick said:

Have you ever heard about Sap Sipper? A lot of ppl figured how to use lower tier mons for this. Weezing is also a great alternative and you can adjust your EV distribution to get some hits comfy. Crobat is able too check it too. Priority users like Mamoswine o Weavile can check it too. I don't know why are you bringing Serperior over and over when there are multiple approaches to deal with it already. Weather are able to take it down too. Another point I think we might consider is how you can actually pp stall it with some cores since leaf storm has a really low amount of pp.

 

Those are just a few things I can think of to check Serperior so there might be more. Serperior is scary, yeah but you have the tools to deal with it. Gallade is different and there's enough evidence about it. Now if you want to ignore those and keep going into randoms topics that's another issue

So the same can be said for Gallade, you can use sableye as the lower tier check (which is way more useful than sap sipper), every priority user except for some fighting types can be effective, scarf users are also able to kill Gallade after he takes some hit, not to mention whether mons like kabutops, hurricane kingdra and Scizor. To be honest sub glare Serperior have way less checks, maybe he also deserves a ban? 😱

[Doctor]

I love when Caio agrees with Caio

 

I also love how the discussion went from Gallade to if Serperior should’ve been banned or not, I almost got baited to respond about it but then I remembered the evil ways of derailing.

 

At this point I think we should have a thread to condense all the good arguments both in favor and against Gallade’s nerf and how it would affect the meta. I’ve heard convincing points from both sides, so why not open a discussion thread about it? Not asking for a ban vote, just somewhere to discuss it in an organized way. About Gallade, just to clarify. Not Serperior, Empoleon, Cloyster or whatever obsession people wake up with that morning.

[caioxlive13]

6 hours ago, Doctor said:

I love when Caio agrees with Caio

I also love how the discussion went from Gallade to if Serperior should’ve been banned or not, I almost got baited to respond about it but then I remembered the evil ways of derailing

The guys there are discussing serperior, i just used it as a example because bringing arguments even consistents(talking about pachima's ones) won't work, so i'm using things that happened to exemplify why your "God-like Arguments" are flawed. And before talking about my methods, look at your ones. I mentioned about the 1,4x and 1,5x Sharpness not having dmg difference and was not broken. You said that had yes a difference. I asked several times: "Prove then." You ignored them all. Vadim had to provide calcs. And it happened a difference in just 2 mons. 2 mons checking you additionally is not enough to make something not broken, because you pass from: Having nothing to check to a situation where you're forced to have X/Y mon to check. 

Edited March 4 by caioxlive13

[VadimEmpoleon]

48 minutes ago, caioxlive13 said:

Vadim had to provide calcs. And it happened a difference in just 2 mons. 2 mons checking you additionally is not enough to make something not broken

Actually, it is not just 2 mons, I just used those 2 as example:

 

On 2/29/2024 at 4:32 AM, VadimEmpoleon said:

If you fail to OHKO Serperior or 2HKO Skarmory you can lose to them making Gallade not a reliable answer in those situations and therefore discouraging people from using it. More examples exist but I thought this would be enough.

 

[vaguelylistless]

On 3/2/2024 at 2:30 PM, OrangeManiac said:

The fact people are even talking about 1,3x / 1,4x Sharpness already shows the kind of awful precedent this has set for competitive discussions, instead of agreeing that arbitrarily throwing a random number is just fundamentally a bad idea.

 

Edit: Ok fine, I'll elaborate this a bit further. Why do we must insist Gallade has to be an OU Pokemon no matter what? I have no opinion whether Gallade in OU is too much, I'm not too deep in the metagame to have a good opinion about that. This whole conversation to me just seems stupid. One day, the devs just decided we are going to give Gallade Sharpness. Maybe for their great surprise, OU metagame was not quite ready for that power and coverage just like that. If we are to decide that Gallade with Sharpness is too much for the game, why can't we revert back to the time when Gallade didn't get Sharpness? We already decided we are not going to update everything (looking at you 90 power Outrage). The problem for devs has always been "nothing should be out of use in competitive play". Removing Sharpness from Gallade would still allow Gallade to do its old usual thing in NU.

 

So, can someone explain to me why do we need Gallade in the OU tier? The point of topic seems to be is Gallade too strong or not. If it is, remove Sharpness from it. If it isn't, leave it as it is. I've already disliked when we need to forcefully keep Pokemon from going Ubers, with SD Garchomp and Draco Hydreigon. But at least, with those Pokemon the question is "Does this solve a problem, yes or no?". With Gallade, the question isn't currently "yes or no", it is "how much?". And from tiering discussion point of view, question of "how much" is just an awful discussion to have. You can move the goalposts pretty much endlessly in that discussion and there's never going to be an agreed multiplier where Gallade is supposedly okay for everybody. Also doing such weird numerical adjustments for things opens up a whole can of worms, especially if there ever is going to be another thing supposedly broken. How are we going to numerically adjust multiple points of discussion at the same time?

I want to hop on the back of this excellent take to provide my own (unnecessary) opinion on the matter.

 

My main frustration with Sharpness Gallade is not that it was added but that the Devs undercut the competitive communities' consensus about the issue at hand. Sure, you can assume that the devs were intent on replicating some sort of parity with the mainline titles to be up-to-date but with the fact that PokeMMO lacks a lot of the things which keeps Sharpness Gallade in check (i.e. new moves, new items, new abilities, new 'mons, insane powercreep, etc) - or said with better phrasing, why don't have a similar level of defensive counter-play in which to keep quite manageable threats in check.

 

The issue with PokeMMO's attempt at parity with modern day mechanical changes to the mainline games is that there is an utter lack of defensive options to cover such threats. We wouldn't be talking about Complex banning SD on Chomp or DM on Drei if we had HDB or Regen Slowbro - not that I would like the inclusion of either mind you. And do recall that we reduced the PP count of recovery moves which makes it far harder to keep such threats at bay. Sure, we have the Assault Gear and Neutralizing Gas Weezing but other than that not much in terms of actual counter-play to the power-creep induced by parity. Like, if most of your defensive answers to certain 'mons are taking hazards chip each time they switch in to take a hit, it is going to be far harder for said defensive answer to continue to be "an answer" in the first place.

 

Think about it. We inhabit a MMO which notable Legendary Defensive Staples like the Genies, 'Rachi, 'Tran, etc don't exist and where Sharpness Gallade is threatening to cut OU into shreds. The awful precedent wasn't set by the userbase but by the devs which "underhandedly" (I recognize the strong verbiage but it seems fitting given the scenario) made the decision without the requisite knowledge of the TC beforehand. If we were to have an ability like Sharpness, most would decrease the power to an amount in line with the parameters of the strength of the corresponding meta-game. We don't have a viable way to research if x1.3, x1.4 or x1.5 Sharpness would be healthier for the OU metagame with a good enough sample size as even calcs only give a sense of what a mon could do given a particular 1v1 scenario.

 

As you have stated correctly, we can discuss which multiplier might be manageable for Gallade to exist in the tier until the eventual heat-death of the universe but we kind of have to because we are following the new precedent which dictates that we plausibly have no say in how competitive is balanced. While it frustrates all of us that we are still harping on the topic of Sharpness, it's kind of the only thing we can do given our current circumstance.

 

TL;DR: The Sharpness discussion is one of the issues that was formed downstream of a lack communication by the development team of PokeMMO and we kind of have to deal with it.

[Luke]

It is just mind-blowing to me that the devs said "Nah we won't ban stuff anymore we only nerf" and now they won't even nerf. Seriously what is the point in a TC, what is the point in even having competitive tiers with no way to restrict anything, I truly despair at the direction the game has gone in.

[Frag]

5 hours ago, Luke said:

It is just mind-blowing to me that the devs said "Nah we won't ban stuff anymore we only nerf" and now they won't even nerf. Seriously what is the point in a TC, what is the point in even having competitive tiers with no way to restrict anything, I truly despair at the direction the game has gone in.

Probably TC fault also, the worst we've had in years, dugtrio still there and gallade still untouched.

Games must be continously updating to keep people interested, even if changes are not too good, but they haven't done anything. 

3 votes vs 3 votes while deciding trio fate, wtf was that, are we in politics now, democrats vs republicans.

[NikhilR]

Oh, so not much has changed then lol.

 

Dugtrio being around reminds me of that spongebob meme of "How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man?"