[Discussion] Snorlax (Test banned to Ubers from April 12th to May 11th)

[codylramey]

A pokemon needs to live the assault in order to be considered a counter. If you have to sac a poke to counter something then there is something wrong somewhere in either the meta or ur team build.

[Excelimpulse]

Or we just don't have the necessary pokes we need for a balanced meta. Im starting to see that were trying to make something out of nothing.

But I agree you shouldn't have to explode or dbond to kill it , but I also think that is one way of handling it for an explosion team. But most are physically run so they shouldn't be exploding on lax to begin with unless it starts to curse.

[fredrichnietze]

Dusclops won't stop curselax, so it needs to be banned.

No, seriously, it's just a setup bait, unless haze, but even then...

 

 

Edit: ^^^ Self destruct lax > metagross  (Not running calcs, but it saved me so many times)

 

 

Fred like 95% of the counters you listed cant consistantly come in on lax, 90% of them are gimiks and not viable in OU, and 99% of them are dead after being parad.

 

Obviously im just making these numbers up, but srs take a look at ur list.

 

Btw Rhydon is actually great for lax. Unless suoerpower/EQ which are usually only seen on CB laxe

 

Also those pokes you list off in the beginning are able to fulfill 2 roles at once. Why are you even comparing them to lax? If vileplume was just as good as lax then it would be OU. Milktank can wall but no where near the extent that Lax can, Also w/o rest a curse milktank is voulnerable to status including toxic which lax is immune to. (idt milktank gets immunity.) I would go through each poke you listed at the beginning and explain why they arent asgood as lax but i need to shower.

if cb lax then other things can counter. as far as cb'ers go lax is b-a rank maybe worse. there are just so many things better at it. the comparisions for ou AND uu not just ou. miltank does not get immunity but it does get heal bell. a curse/milk drink/heal bell/normal attack miltank is viable and i have seen them before. people will toxic them and assume they'll die and just switch to a wall while tank sets up. then miltank heal bells and drinks off damage. the problem ofc is rock/steel/ghost types. pursuit users can take out the ghost types and diglette/dugtrio can trap kill the steels/rocks except skarm ofc. after a few curses a miltank thats immune to status and several curses up is pretty dangerous if you dont have a phazer'r.

 

Admitting that snorlax is only viable as a Curser is a big mistake.

You are finding counters admitting that wrong thing, so most of them are not counters to lax before checking anything.

Moreover, some of them are kind of bad or even not viable in OU. I will prove it when i'll have some time.

 

Finally, saying that explosion is a counter to lax is a bit stupid. I think i don't even need to say why.

 

It seems that you want to find counters where you can't.

im waiting for your post. in the mean time, 99% of the time i agree with you that explosion/self destruct is not a counter. however if fort sets up spikes first then snorlax dies, fort dies, and you now have spikes up. the fort user has lost one poke and gained spikes. the snor user has lost on poke. so the fort user is slightly ahead. if nothing else, the spin user will have to take damage unless it's claydol which honestly does not have a place in ou.

 

A pokemon needs to live the assault in order to be considered a counter. If you have to sac a poke to counter something then there is something wrong somewhere in either the meta or ur team build.

the only explosion user i threw in there was fort. read above post.

[ThinkNice]

Yet another discussion thread that gets derailed by discussing terminology, or any other irrelevant banter. Like I said when someone is using words in the wrong way, tell them once and don't bother explaining over and over.

 

As I see it I don't see Snorlax fitting in the three Uber criteria that we have. It can not sweep a large portion of the metagame with ease. It has a lot more difficulty setting up Curses and even when it has Curse stacks it is not guaranteed to sweep with the popular Bulky Gengar levitating about. It does not fit in the defensive characteristics for an Uber either, the shift to physical offense in the meta made this much harder for Snorlax. His only support move is Whirlwind, it does this okay, but does not fit into a lot of team archetypes.

 

However, Snorlax gained some crucial tools with the last update, that keeps him an excellent pick above everything else. Even with the shift of focus to physical offense. It gained Selfdestruct, Fire Punch, Pursuit and Crunch. Making his Curse set even more terrifying. The absence of Tyranitar doesn't force Snorlax to choose for Earthquake either. A major plus for our obesity promoting Mc Donalds parody. This makes Snorlax a massive offensive threat, that has one thing going for it above all other offensive threats. His ability to switch in easily on most special attackers or walls/tanks.Again however, this still doesn't make Snorlax fall under any of the Uber characteristics, in my opinion.

 

Be that as it may, there is still one other way to justify a ban in any tier. This is in regard to the health of the metagame. Does Snorlax influence the whole meta in a way no other Pokémon does, in a negative way? Things we can look at are:

• Is it too good not to use?
• Does it limit teambuilding?
• Does it force the metagame to stagnate, resulting in an unevolving metagame
• Does it's presence alone make certain archetypes/playstyles non-viable?

 

We can argue weeks about this back and forth. These are highly subjective questions and there is no way to tell objectively who is right just from discussion. Some questions are also harder to answer than others, like 'Does it make the metagame stagnant?'. Well if you would test this, you would see the metagame evolving immediately, but this happens after every ban. The real question is, does it keep evolving for a long period in time, in a healthy way, after Snorlax is out of the way?

 

A healthy metagame promotes every playstyle (in a perfect metagame they would be all as viable), variety is the result of this. A healthy metagame keeps evolving back and forth, with set A becoming popular first than set B being used to counter set A, people making set C to counter set B but it gets beat by set A, meaning all of them can be used, and the meta keeps evolving back and forth. There are many more things that point to a healthy metagame, I suggest everyone to read the Smogon thread about a healthy metagame. I agree with the OP on most points and it would be easier to read that, than I wasting my time trying to rephrase everything.

 

So all of that aside, what do I think should be done? Well, I propose a suspect ban for a period of like two months. There should be another thread opened called '[Suspect Test] Snorlax' that discusses the metagame without and with Snorlax. This is the only way to really 'test' to see if Snorlax is, or is not, healthy for the metagame. If it is not, than there you have it, a justification to ban it. The only 'downside' to this is that: you can't ban anything else in OU for as long as the suspect test is going on.

Edited March 29, 2015 by ThinkNice

[Excelimpulse]

Suspect test I think should last two weeks in the major tournaments. I think that should be a long enough period for it to see it adapt. 2 months I think is just to long. But I'm not in favor of any ban on it becahse of what you said in beginning of the post. Changing the way we ban things could end up harming the meta.

But if we suspecting I would do two weeks imo

[DrCraig]

Suspect test I think should last two weeks in the major tournaments. I think that should be a long enough period for it to see it adapt. 2 months I think is just to long. But I'm not in favor of any ban on it becahse of what you said in beginning of the post. Changing the way we ban things could end up harming the meta.

But if we suspecting I would do two weeks imo

Two weeks means like 2/3 tournaments in which people do not have enough time to adapt to the lack of Snorlax pressure. Breeding still takes a couple days to a week. Two months is a suitable time period in which several tournaments can embrace the suspect ban, not all of them have to (like the Spring Championship which would seem illogical to use the suspect.)

[DoubleJ]

Instead of a time period it should be a mandatory number of tournaments. Like 5-7 or so. About the same time frame.

[Senile]

Yet another discussion thread that gets derailed by discussing terminology, or any other irrelevant banter. Like I said when someone is using words in the wrong way, tell them once and don't bother explaining over and over.

 

As I see it I don't see Snorlax fitting in the three Uber criteria that we have. It can not sweep a large portion of the metagame with ease. It has a lot more difficulty setting up Curses and even when it has Curse stacks it is not guaranteed to sweep with the popular Bulky Gengar levitating about. It does not fit in the defensive characteristics for an Uber either, the shift to physical offense in the meta made this much harder for Snorlax. His only support move is Whirlwind, it does this okay, but does not fit into a lot of team archetypes.

 

However, Snorlax gained some crucial tools with the last update, that keeps him an excellent pick above everything else. Even with the shift of focus to physical offense. It gained Selfdestruct, Fire Punch, Pursuit and Crunch. Making his Curse set even more terrifying. The absence of Tyranitar doesn't force Snorlax to choose for Earthquake either. A major plus for our obesity promoting Mc Donalds parody. This makes Snorlax a massive offensive threat, that has one thing going for it above all other offensive threats. His ability to switch in easily on most special attackers or walls/tanks.Again however, this still doesn't make Snorlax fall under any of the Uber characteristics, in my opinion.

 

Be that as it may, there is still one other way to justify a ban in any tier. This is in regard to the health of the metagame. Does Snorlax influence the whole meta in a way no other Pokémon does, in a negative way? Things we can look at are:

• Is it too good not to use?
• Does it limit teambuilding?
• Does it force the metagame to stagnate, resulting in an unevolving metagame
• Does it's presence alone make certain archetypes/playstyles non-viable?

 

We can argue weeks about this back and forth. These are highly subjective questions and there is no way to tell objectively who is right just from discussion. Some questions are also harder to answer than others, like 'Does it make the metagame stagnant?'. Well if you would test this, you would see the metagame evolving immediately, but this happens after every ban. The real question is, does it keep evolving for a long period in time, in a healthy way, after Snorlax is out of the way?

 

A healthy metagame promotes every playstyle (in a perfect metagame they would be all as viable), variety is the result of this. A healthy metagame keeps evolving back and forth, with set A becoming popular first than set B being used to counter set A, people making set C to counter set B but it gets beat by set A, meaning all of them can be used, and the meta keeps evolving back and forth. There are many more things that point to a healthy metagame, I suggest everyone to read the Smogon thread about a healthy metagame. I agree with the OP on most points and it would be easier to read that, than I wasting my time trying to rephrase everything.

 

So all of that aside, what do I think should be done? Well, I propose a suspect ban for a period of like two months. There should be another thread opened called '[Suspect Test] Snorlax' that discusses the metagame without and with Snorlax. This is the only way to really 'test' to see if Snorlax is, or is not, healthy for the metagame. If it is not, than there you have it, a justification to ban it. The only 'downside' to this is that: you can't ban anything else in OU for as long as the suspect test is going on.

Tfw I suggested the exact same thing in the council PM for the exact same reasons like a week ago lmao.

 

We decided it wasn't worth doing though, since none of us really thought it was banworthy to begin with, so running a test without it "just cuz" didn't seem worth doing if none of us saw it as a problem to begin with.

[ThinkNice]

Tfw I suggested the exact same thing in the council PM for the exact same reasons like a week ago lmao.

 

We decided it wasn't worth doing though, since none of us really thought it was banworthy to begin with, so running a test without it "just cuz" didn't seem worth doing if none of us saw it as a problem to begin with.

I don't think it's 'just cuz' like I stated in my post. It has an undeniable impact on the metagame, if this is banworthy or not I agree is not forsee able. But that is just more reason to hold a suspect test. Like I said, you can't really theorize it.

[codylramey]

I support a two month suspect test. But maybe only after some overpowered pokes ar banned. If one of the pokemon being discussed, ie dugtrio and heracross, are deemed ban worthy we should do that first. The let the meta settle and move forward with the suspect test.

Edited March 29, 2015 by codylramey

[Senile]

I don't think it's 'just cuz' like I stated in my post. It has an undeniable impact on the metagame, if this is banworthy or not I agree is not forsee able. But that is just more reason to hold a suspect test. Like I said, you can't really theorize it.

Yeah, but we can't just test something because it has a big impact on the metagame. So, we were like "well, it has a big impact, but does anyone think it could be banworthy, and by extension be worth testing", since we weren't gonna simply test it for being used a lot. Since nobody really seemed to think it was an issue, we just decided against a test.

[Excelimpulse]

I honestly don't think any of them are ban worthy none of them fit the criteria for a ban.

[Robofiend]

I actually like the idea of testing it. While we (TC) are all skeptical about actually banning it, I think the amount of discussion in this thread might actually warrant a test ban so we can see what the meta looks like without it. 

[fredrichnietze]

I actually like the idea of testing it. While we (TC) are all skeptical about actually banning it, I think the amount of discussion in this thread might actually warrant a test ban so we can see what the meta looks like without it. 

remember that one time we tested shuckle? and then everybody forgot and he was never moved back? legit test sounds goods but i would be opposed to another indefinite test. lets put a time limit. also if we are testing lax free meta, the usage stats will be useless for the period of the test for determining uu/nu. we'd also have to put all bans on hold for a bit in ou as anything uber without lax may or may not be uber with lax around.

[Robofiend]

remember that one time we tested shuckle? and then everybody forgot and he was never moved back? legit test sounds goods but i would be opposed to another indefinite test. lets put a time limit. also if we are testing lax free meta, the usage stats will be useless for the period of the test for determining uu/nu. we'd also have to put all bans on hold for a bit in ou as anything uber without lax may or may not be uber with lax around.

 

IIRC we ended up tallying votes on that one and everyone was cool with keeping it banned

[fredrichnietze]

IIRC we ended up tallying votes on that one and everyone was cool with keeping it banned

i never heard of any of this and it was still labeled "testing" in the official thread that got trashed

[Senile]

i never heard of any of this and it was still labeled "testing" in the official thread that got trashed

Everyone was okay with it being banned so we just left it alone. It was still labeled testing because we forgot and it wasn't important enough to change rofl.

We learned from that in the Baton Pass test where we put timeframes in though, so I don't know what your concern is.

[fredrichnietze]

Everyone was okay with it being banned so we just left it alone. It was still labeled testing because we forgot and it wasn't important enough to change rofl.

We learned from that in the Baton Pass test where we put timeframes in though, so I don't know what your concern is.

just concerned people may have forgot the lessons from previous test but it seems my concern is unwarranted. 

[DoubleJ]

Hmmmmm "not banworthy" per OU council --> no need for a suspect test ~Senile

 

"Could use a suspect test" ~Robofiend

 

 

Now let's find some consistency here. Either we close this thread because it honestly just isn't that big of a problem right now and the OU council has determined it that way, or we open a suspect thread and ban Snorlax for a predeterminate number of tournaments. 

[NikhilR]

GG Tier Council. For a month, almost the whole community has been asking for a ban and you ignore it.

[Blue]

GG Tier Council. For a month, almost the whole community has been asking for a ban and you ignore it.

cuz they are good

[spoiler]

good at ignoring community and do their own shit without caring

[/spoiler]

[DrCraig]

GG Tier Council. For a month, almost the whole community has been asking for a ban and you ignore it.

u dunt no wat ur takling abowt

[codylramey]

Tier council... Its Time.

Edited April 3, 2015 by codylramey

[jayfeatskydd]

Is meta-game healthier w/o Lax?

LF Suspect.

[DoubleJ]

Representative JJ from the House of the Community asks that the membership of the OU Tier Council convene on the matter of a Snorlax suspect test to ensure that the meta we live in today is the most beneficial meta of tomorrow.