During the 4th Generation the Pokemon Online server followed Smogon banlists to the letter. That meant our usage stats had no impact on UU and below and that we followed every single ban that was instituted. This resulted in a few controversial bans on here that a large portion of the community disagreed with. Recently Smogon went back and started messing around with Advance tiering, so we figured that now would be a prime time to start reevaluating some of the controversial bans in the late Platinum area. The first investigation will be done on Salamence. It was banned by a majority vote by the first Smogon Council which meant that only 9 of the thousands of competitive Pokemon players had a say. Salamence will be unbanned on the Pokemon Online server for a month following this post and depending on public opinion we will be having a vote at the end of the phase.
If we are having fun, can we have Latias as well? Might as well test both like smogon did. They are pretty nice checks for each other anyways. Now teams will actually be a lot more diverse which is ironic considering Latias was banned for overcentralizing. that is if Latias comes back too. Mr rukario would be proud. Save Latias And by diverse I mean standard ladder teams will not be the same thing like now
Please lets not retest Latias, at least with Salamence it had to use 2 sets to demolish the entire metagame. Latias can just spam Dmeteor or Surf.
It's funny because Latias' power was never the problem. Also isn't amazing how gen 4 things are used in gen 5 to check / counter Latios and Latias still in gen 5? The least you could do is try it because Latias didnt exist in dp nu. But any hard hitting thing must be banned now like moltres.
@Devo, keep in mind Latias loses to the omnipresent Scarftar more oft that not, a set that really didn't break out until just before the ban (though i had been using it for 6 months on my cartridge team by that point) meaning it wasn't given as much consideration as a check due to the fact that i could be seen as a result of the centralization of latias seeing as it was a "new" find. the best thing if latias is retested, which i would like to see, is test Mence, then ban Mence and Test Latias, then unban both and have the voting based on meta. For Mence, pretty much Mixmence (Outrage/EQ/DM/Fire Blast) which ravaged Stall (not arguing the present meta tends to favor it too much personally), and DD (DD/Outrage/Fire Blast/EQ) Top Mid/Late Game Sweeper. Not going to go into depth JUST yet, I haven't build teams, though definitely looking forward to testing.
I'm glad that we are going back to gen 4, STAYING ON SUBJECT of Mence, I never experienced a metagame (4th gen) with it in it. I got into competitive after its ban, so it will be interesting to see (Lol, ded tier) it used.
Testing Latias again is stupid. The Platinum metagame was literally 4 Steels 2 Dragons. It was not balanced at all. Salamence is much more controversial so I think testing it again is great.
Salamence without Latias is Uber I think both Latias and Salamence are OU. Its a fact that current DP OU is the worst DP metagame ever
Well, if we unbann Salamence i would prefer seeing Latias also again in OU Because: a)If we unban Mence, the Metagame will shift very hard anyway without it. Alone Mence will change it. Latias don´t will it change it harder then ! b)Latias is pobably one of the better checks to it c)Salamence is a pkmn who is very hard to check d)Latias is not broken, Mence is harder to take down then Latias All in all i think we should unban Latias then too, but i also would like to see Mence alone too :) I talk to some good players now who should reply here too. Latias & Mence for OU Mence for OU
Sorry IFM but unbanning Mence and not latias is just stupid when we know that mence is even more broken then latias in OU due to it's ability to wallbreak everything and due to the fact that mence, in the opposite of latias is unpredictable. Trying a meta with Mence Uber and Latias OU would have been way more clever..
Its funny because you clearly don't have a clue about Latias then, because it was the power of Specs Dmeteor that got it banned in the first place. I actually did play DP OU (and Smogon's suspect ladder), but clearly you don't care about the truth. @PNerd Hey, you're the one that let me ban it, and I was the one who actually bothered to check what usage it had so we could retest it. @Fidgety Latias 2HKO's Ttar, If Ttar Pursuits Latias it isn't a KO, and Ttar is dead. If Ttar Crunches, then Latias can switch out and Ttar is dead the next time it tries to take a hit. If Ttar attempts to revenge kill Latias has already gotten at least one kill and done its job.
Prediction is the key.... IFM pm me if you need a short report about the changes on the ladder & my opnion
The only common counter Latias gained this gen is Ferrothorn. Jirachi, Heatran, Tyranitar, Scizor, Blissey and Bronzong (Who was significantly more common in DPP OU) are used this gen to beat Latios, who has 20 more SAtk than Latias, so I don't see how Latias is so impossible to beat in DPP OU. Also 252SpAtk Choice Specs Latias (Neutral) Draco Meteor in Sandstorm vs 252HP/252SpDef Leftovers Tyranitar (+SpDef): 36% - 43% (147 - 174 HP). Guaranteed 3HKO. Save Latias
yea somone posting what i mean. i asked a bit around a most ppl sayed that the worst meta was the one with mence and without latias. also them sayed that mence was allways harder to check then latias. IDK why ppl say that latias is broken rly if you fear latias that much then play spdef ttar or a curse ttar :) (14:11) TheFourthChaser: a retest is fine but I still think it would be Uber (14:11) TheFourthChaser: and the people voting I have my doubts in (14:11) TheFourthChaser: also people talk about Latias in there don't even bother testing that (14:11) TheFourthChaser: Latias OU was a terrible metagame (14:12) TheFourthChaser: uh well (14:12) TheFourthChaser: I thought Mence was broken but it wasn't a bad metagame really (23:14) taylor: lol (23:14) taylor: scarftar mamoswine are good checks (23:14) taylor: they can work against one another (23:14) taylor: so why not test both?
Yeah, Latias has plenty of SURE COUNTERS in dpp OU when salamence has NONE. Change quickly that plz, the ladder is just awful, salamence just do a murder each time he comes in cause it's IMPOSSIBLE to predict it. gdi, take good dpp players opinions into account next time cuz i feel that this salamence unban hasn't been much debated.
@Trotski, Mixmence which is the "uncounterable" set has 2, Cress and P2 though if they are weakened a bit they do die to DM+Outrage, DD is the more managable of the 2, both Latias and mence have their share of checks (most of them are good regardless (EG Scarftar and Mamoswine). I'm about to post my present team as an RMT, just because it will show what a good team in this meta looks like.
Cresselia gets 2HKO with SR by DM+Outrage + come on, cresselia is horrible in dpp. It get's loltrapped by any scarftar ou zor , 2HKO by most commun threats, you can't consider him as a counter. P2 is probably the only one BUT he has to be at 100% of his lie and still has a little chance to get 2HKO by 2DM from a max spA mixmence.
Yeah but it's common practice to pin the blame on someone else for your mistakes! Or just outright deny them, at least.
Every choice the LU leaders made was at least 2/3 (other than Slowking even though neither DBond or myself wanted it banned). You very well know that. Or maybe Moltres was broken, then the metagame changed to make it much less threatening like every other retested mon that is still in the tier.
I never played the DPP OU metagame so someone here correct my clear mistakes :) I see Mence as a brilliant theorymon but it's not difficult to set up a Dragon Dance - or 2 since it didn't have too many counters off the top of my head. The problem I see with unbanning Mence is the same reason Gyarados was so good in DPP - no team preview. If you know they have a Mence on their team then you know to keep alive your counter at all costs so Mence can't sweep you - the problem is you don't know. After 1 DD it outspeeds ScarfHeatran (Obviously) and OHKOs with earthquake while it also OHKOs standard physically defensive Skarmory with a fire blast - it also deals between 65% and 77% to a specially defensive Skarmory It is countered by IMO 2 of the top 20 used pokemon (Physically defensive Gyarados (again I don't know how common that was since I never played DPP OU, but it can ice fang, roar and even taunt if played correctly) and Starmie (How common was Scarfmie which outspeeds after a DD, obviously) whilst Swampert can take a hit, as can Gliscor, Suicune and TTar but the standard sets of each of those pokemon can't really do much back to Mence since CroCune doesn't generally carry Ice Beam). This is all just theory but I can't rate Mence - just giving out some useful statistics Also congrats to PNerd for 1234 posts!
You realize I was referring to myself right? I think I made a mistake in agreeing to ban Moltres the second time. lol Also fuck we need to get back to Mence.
I'm curious. How many of you wanting to unban Latias actually played DP OU when it was allowed? I ask this, because in my opinion that metagame was terrible. Yes, Latias hasn't gained that many checks/counters since last gen, but you need to keep Team Preview in mind, it's much easier to deal with when you know your opponent's full team. I'm pretty sure the BW OU banlist would be a lot bigger than it is right now if Team Preview didn't exist. Looking at the list of Pokemon Bad Romance mentioned. Half of them get crippled by Trick (Jirachi (which needs Wish or it can't really deal with Latias anyway), Blissey, Bronzong). The other 3 can all be 2HKO'd by a Specs Surf (yes even specially defensive Tyranitar which was almost never used in DP) and Scizor is almost 2HKO'd by a Specs Draco Meteor after SR damage. Imo we should just stick with testing Salamence for now, I think unbanning Latias would be a bad idea.
Latias has enough check in DPP OU, but that's not the goal. The goal is that Salamanece without Latias is Uber so if we unban one them, the other also needs to be unban.
or you could leave a perfectly balanced old metagame alone? this is so senseless. having a few counters isn't what makes a pokemon ou instead of uber, it's how they affect the metagame. are you really interested in seeing nothing but scarftar and 3x steel 3x dragon teams? that's what we call overcentralization! latias was actually banned by the community and not just some smogon council, and it was voted on more than once so i am not sure why/how you would argue with those results?... salamence is a worse issue, because its two sets destroy teams in completely different ways and have completely different counters. switch swampert into mence expecting it to DD and get smacked with a draco meteor and your stall team has a gaping hole in it, or don't switch swampert in because you're afraid of draco meteor and get set up on and swept. mixmence doesn't have many (cresselia is garbage and if p2 is on EVERY SINGLE TEAM to beat mixmence the metagame is bad) hard counters. all you can do is predict around it until it kills itself with residual damage or you can kill it with a prio move or something faster/scarfed. playing against mence is often a guessing game and if you guess its set wrong it tears you apart. no other pokemon gets free kills like mence does. even if the metagame shifts (see: becomes overcentralized) to "handle" mence and latias, mence is still too good. it's clear that everyone agrees that salamence should not be unbanned without latias, but it should be pretty obvious why neither of them should be unbanned. there's no reason to unban latias when it was already voted on by the ENTIRE COMPETITIVE POKEMON COMMUNITY (which smogon essentially was at the time), and there's no reason to create inconsistencies in the tier list for an old metagame. people shouldn't have to change teams to play DP on the main servers. DP battles are scarce enough as it is compared to BW battles, there's no need to divide an old, established, ALREADY SHRINKING community of players, when the metagame is perfectly fine! i get that you want to be different from smogon and all but they have a large community of intelligent players and sometimes (often) they are just right. half of you are people that didn't play before mence and latias got banned and are just theorymonning. the other half are dragon pkmn fanboys that were around when they got banned and have been disgruntled ever since. i get it. but try taking an objective look at the tiers and at the competitive pokemon community as a whole. there's absolutely no reason to do this.
i post something (fakes's request) if salamence is unabnned, why not unbanning latias who has solid check ?
This discussion is brilliant. we have established many points! But yeah I'm with everyone else, unban Latias as well. Metagame of Back In Action lgi ! (besides this current metagame sucks)
can the people who want latias just have it for a week? Then you can go all crazy with the bans or whatever. I honestly don't care about the future, but i would like to play that metagame again instead of asking for battles even if its just for a week. Besides, most of the people in here haven't played it. Let the new kids play so they can actually talk and provide good insight instead of pure "theory" Honestly, this will affect almost no one. Half of the people here do not ladder DP OU anyways. The only way this affects most people is through dumb script tours where DP OU (or any serious tier) goes to die. It's not like people are taking this seriously; you have free garchomps and sarcastic pleas for manaphy. Just leave the tier alone, but if you want to have fun (i'm all for fun), just give it a week or something. Stuff like this has been done before on shoddy servers with smaller communities. Also, if you want to make the comparison to ADV OU, they only rearranged tiers: they did not unban something. It's a little different for DPP, but the ruling should still be the same. Let the past stay the past.
Just leave the tier as it was lol. On a more serious note, can we free Deoxys-s + Wobbuffet + Chomp for 1 week :3 it was the best metagame I even played. Period.
All that applies in Gen 5 too, except Latias can't actually predict properly because of no team preview (the lack of team preview means it needs to do blind predict early game). Also 252SpAtk Choice Specs Latias (Neutral) Surf in Sandstorm vs 252HP/252SpDef Leftovers Tyranitar (+SpDef): 33% - 39% (134 - 158 HP). Guaranteed 4HKO. Don't get me wrong, I believe unbanning shit from DPP is retarded (Both Salamence and Latias included here) and I do believe Latias was broken last gen, but people are overrating Latias way too much, theorymoning out of their assess about how Latias 2HKOes the whole tier and how it is impossible to beat, which is completely false. Also good to see this thread became a joke for most people. I guess I can post this again! Save Latias
What the hell? Why are you unbanning Salamence (and Latias) now? I enjoyed playing DPP :/ @Bad Romance: Specially Defensive Tyranitar is an awful set in Gen 4, I´ve never used it ever and I´ve never seen someone else use it either. If people were to use such a poor set for an otherwise great Pokemon that would point to overcentralization. Choice Scarf Tyranitar is the best check to it that is actually a viable Tyranitar set, but it's 2HKOed by Surf so if you predict wrong with Pursuit / Crunch, you're fucked. Draco Meteor can also do up to 70%, so with SR it means you can't even take a Shadow Ball from Gengar or something or you're in KO range. As for your other counters: Jirachi: Okay. Though the problem with Jirachi is that Choice Scarf versions have no recovery, they get quickly worn down quickly by repeated Surfs (scenario: Latias switches in, uses Surf while Jirachi switches in and takes SR + Surf damage, Jirachi U-turns out while Latias switches, Jirachi is KOed by Draco Meteor / Surf + SR next time). On the other hand Wish variants are really prone to Trick, a Specially Defensive / Wish CM Jirachi with a Tricked Choice Specs can't really heal itself and is setup fodder for a ton of common Pokemon. Heatran: Choice Specs Surf KOes standard Heatran after Stealth Rock. Specially Defensive Heatran is really uncommon and it is 2HKOed after SR while Lava Plume does a huge 16% maximum! Scizor: 2HKOed by Surf after SR, Bullet Punch doesn't KO and anything else means it's 2HKOed. Blissey: Trick. Bronzong: Trick messes it up, and without recovery it can't take continuous Surfs. As for Salamence, broken. MixMence vs DDMence means if you're wrong you're losing a Pokemon. Period. There's nothing that can counter both MixMence and DDMence. Cresselia is 2HKOed by Rash Salamence's Draco Meteor + Outrage.
Mence&Latias should go both to OU Tomhawk9: Sorry but that Metagame isn´t that good. If u never used Spdef TTar don´t say that is bad -_- Also we talk about Mence and maybe Latias so stop guys postig stuff like unbann Wobuffet for a week. (would be lol though ;p) &I know another Counter for a Slamence &Tamhak Spdef Empoleon should be a great check too fr latias
sorry, but that's just like your opinion man. tell me exactly why the until recently perfectly balanced dp metagame, which has been set in stone for a few years now, from an objective, competitive standpoint wasn't that good. then tell me how unbanning salamence and latias, after they were ALREADY VOTED UBER through meticulous testing and voting processes, will objectively improve it. tell me how this is not a waste of time. note: telling me about the handful of alleged counters salamence and latias have is not an answer to this question.
um ok after playing that meta 15 months peaking many times the #1 spot and beeing the ex gym leader i know what i say here. For example ALL Team looks nowadays like Starmie/Shaymin/Heatran/Suicune/Flygon/Metagross I dislike the fact that this kind of semistall/BO is pretty much impossile to beat with stall if played correctly FWG cores anywhere... ALSO i could tell more but beeing busy, don´t comment this post now i will edit later more.
to be fair there aren't many innovative players left laddering in the DPOU metagame, nor are there many innovations left to be made anyway. the fact that you are bored with an old metagame that you are exceedingly good at is no reason to unban pokemon that are decidedly overpowered. DP is not being played as much, so naturally there is not going to be as much evolution and innovation in the metagame. that's what happens to old metagames. also, pure stall teams are difficult to win with in every OU metagame (in adv "balance" and tss both demolish stall teams, in gsc everything is more defensive but check out how common bellylax is and how many offensive-minded pokemon there are in the top 10 of the usage statistics), but that doesn't mean the metagames are bad. they are tried and true, wonderful, balanced metagames. stall is MOSTLY a reactionary style of play so you have to play it incredibly consistently and you have to rely on your opponent making mistakes to win. that's the way it's supposed to be. furthermore, in DP there are tons of OU threats, so if a single piece of your stall team dies there's a huge hole left in your defense. besides, I don't see how unbanning incredible wallbreakers like salamence and latias will help stall win anyway... but they can certainly break up fwg cores, if you don't mind playing against 3x steel 3x dragon teams instead. there's much less variety in the metagame that way if anything. remember, the point of the banlist is to limit overcentralization and make the metagame fair and competitive. it isn't to make the metagame "fun," according to anyone's individual opinion. the line of thinking is that if the metagame is competitive and varied it WILL naturally be fun to the large majority of people. salamence may be fun to use for some players, and an interesting change of pace to have in the metagame, but it is too powerful and it has too much influence on the way teams are built. latias is less broken than salamence by far, but it still forces people to use multiple checks/counters to contain it on EVERY TEAM, or at least scarftar, and since it was already agreed upon more than once that it was too powerful by the community at large i don't see what business anyone has repealing that now.
The reason why i want see them back in OU is that a lot ppl will start playing DPPt OU again :) 3 Steels > FWG
Okay so I think your reasoning is flawed. The metagame becomes better and teams become more different? Ha! Every team becomes the same. 3 Steels / 3 Dragons. How exactly is 3 Steels > FWG? Not every team needs FWG core, I've had many succesful teams without a FWG core, if you think every team needs a FWG core you have a narrow view. There's also a lot more room for creativity imo, unlike Latias/Salamence metagame where every team has to carry several Dragon-types and Steel-types. I've used a DragMag team in the current metagame which has been very succesful, having ~90% win rate I think, adding Latias and Salamence makes that even worse as they are a lot better than Dragonite and Flygon and I don't want every team to be DragMag. Also, I doubt that a lot of people will start playing DPP OU again when this happens, in fact I think activity on PO server decreases and increases on Smogon server. On a side note, SubCM Latias is another set to keep in mind, it beats several of Specs' counters, including Blissey, Bronzong, Empoleon, Heatran (both need Toxic btw to even have a chance of beating normal Latias so no room for Roar), which leaves just Scizor and Tyranitar whose Pursuit is blocked by Sub. And Choiced Pursuit is fortunately very exploitable by stuff like Lucario. Anyways, I think Specs Latias and SubCM Latias work similar as the two Mence sets as they can beat some of the others counters, you definitely don't want to switch Scizor in on a Specs Surf of Heatran in on a SubCM Latias who completely sets up and sweeps on you. And I have used SpDef Tyranitar a couple of times, honestly it was very disappointing when you're too weak to Pursuit trap anything without investment, and you're really slow as well making you easily exploitable to WoW. Pursuit doesn't even KO Gengar, to show how weak it is.
nah tomehawk my reason is a complettly dfirent one the reason is thaht more ppl will start laddering again Also spdef TTar/curse ttar will work better in the "new" metagame i think po should make a "shury" like 10 püpl who ladder active and who decide then what to do or just let the community decide...and srsly we should ask sum player who played that ära actifity & sub cm latias is aboos SpDef empoleon is another save check in my opnion
This is the exact same kind of overreaction I was talking about, having a 100% counter for Latias is bad because you never used it, Latias always predicts right (I guess you are psychic or something because without team preview at early game you aren't predicting, you are throwing blind guesses) and it cannot be worn down like a normal Pokemon. Seriously? I'm not even arguing Latias is broken, I even said I believe it was broken, but I'm not pulling ridiculous crap to prove it. Also Rash Salamence was more uncommon than Sdef Ttar, but apparently uncommon sets are both bad and good, depending of what you need to prove.