Sunday, March 29, 2015

I say "how about Smogon unbans stuff?" (Update 04/01)

And Smogon says "how about we unban Giratina-O?"

Seriously, that's happening. It's been a while since we've last had some kind of unbanning that didn't involve the gen-start reset, so I'm looking forward to seeing how this test goes. Not sure why not Giratina as a whole, but hey, that's a start. It also emphasizes the third-version cover legendary curse even further... the only one worth using in ubers is actually so powerful it's banned from there too.

Edit: The early buzz suggests it's pretty dang ridiculous. I mean, 150/100/100 defenses and 120 in both attack stats? With a movepool far above and beyond anything Kyurem-B could muster? Yikes. The Griseous Orb isn't exactly dead weight either. Sure, it misses Leftovers dearly, and has no instant recovery whatsoever, but +20% to all STAB moves is still pretty dang solid.

Edit 2: So it WAS an April Fools joke after all. Not do the joke on April 1st just to get people, then specifically say it's not a joke, and if it was it'd be on April 1st? That's kinda low. Though I wonder how the people who said it was balanced are feeling now. They're probably the biggest fools of all at this point. The good news, though, is that now we know: unbanning anything right now is a pretty bad idea. Giratina-O was in all likelihood the uber with the best chance of getting demoted, and look how well THAT went.

12 comments:

  1. It IS getting close to April 1st, so keep that in mind. That isn't to say that the test isn't happening, but some of these posts just seem a bit...off. The OU suspect thread has always been notoriously bad, so it could just be that. Giratina-O has a good enough case to be tested, though. The metagame has shifted a lot from generation 4, so who knows? If stuff like Latios and Kyurem-B are already allowed in, why not see exactly what the metagame can handle?

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    1. It IS happening... just look at their Twitter. If they wanted to do an April Fools joke, they would've done it on April 1st.

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  2. For those questioning it, the relevant thread/twitter posts are here
    http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/np-oras-ou-suspect-process-round-3-ghosts.3533937/
    and here
    https://twitter.com/SmogonU/status/582264145007022080

    But as for my view... this could be interesting. A high BST combined with the inability to hold an item is very much like a Mega pokemon without using up your Mega Slot. However, I think even with that item issue, Giratina-O is way too much because of the things it can do. I think it's bulk is kinda unfair and the thing is, despite a weakness to Knock Off, I believe the Griseous Orb would be immune to the Knock Off effects because of the coding tied to it, though correct me if I'm wrong on that.

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    1. Yeah, Knock Off wouldn't do shit.

      Anyway, I'm not sure the mega comparison holds water, because the Griseous Orb has an extra effect beyond enabling the transformation. Mega stones don't.

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  3. What if for their April Fools joke they announced that Mega-Rayquaza was found to be in fact not too powerful for Ubers and they knocked it down to the PU tier for one day?

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  4. Apparently they edited the OP but here is a reddit post that claims the original announcement had a secret April fools message hidden in the first letter of each sentence

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  5. Oops forgot the link http://www.reddit.com/r/stunfisk/comments/30ts1w/proof_girao_suspect_is_a_joke/

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    1. Pretty sure THAT is the fake. When I saw it yesterday it was the way it is now. Besides, they set up a freaking ladder for it. Not sure people would appreciate their time getting wasted on a bogus test. Additional proof: the lack of "last edited on" in the original post.

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  6. You lot see the MS Paint sprites on Pokemon Showdown today?...

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  7. Well, it was a joke after all. Will be interesting to see what backlash there is on this. People put in some serious time and thought into testing this thing and discussing it.

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    1. Yeah, they announced it was all a joke on April 1. That means precisely nothing.

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    2. Yeah, realized that right after I posted, duh. Better wait until tomorrow to pass judgment.

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