GSC OU Trapping and Finalising our GSC 1U Ruleset

[Disaster Area]

It's generally agreed now that there can't and won't be any significant movement on the GSC OU [to become 1U] ruleset in terms of legal Pokémon. Furthermore, Hidden Power Legends is not a clearly nessecary rule and is so peculiar of a rule that it is absolutely not an option. So the remaining areas of discussion relates to PerishTrapping.

The ruleset which we currently enforce is SleepTrap [so Sleep Move (such as Hypnosis or Spore) + Trapping move (such as Mean Look ) are banned]. The main alternatives are:

- Remove the rule completely and permit SleepTrap
- Use the SleepPerishTrap rule, so a Sleep Move + Perish Song + a Trapping Move is the illegal combination
- Ban any of the moves in the problematic combinations. If this were done then probably the most sensible approach is to ban Trapping moves.

So the questions to ask are:
- What rule options limit the problems that each of the clauses attempt to address sufficiently and which ones don't?
- Which rule has the least collateral impact?
- Which rule is the simplest and most memorable?
And so on...

Our tiering system's approach to banning, from this thread:

Banning

A ban is merited where a pokemon/move/item/etc. has a significant negative impact upon a metagame and the subsequent play experience. This is the sole criterion for a ban being implemented, and encompasses various issues such as those relating to balance and undermining the importance of skill, while also focusing on its role in the metagame as a whole, which includes any effects on diversity.

Although most bans will target pokemon, there is the option of banning other things, such as moves and abilities. This is not ideal, but may sometimes be the best option, as although we should always endeavour to adapt to such things before considering bans, this may not be possible. In such cases, it should be demonstrated that such a ban will either have no impact or a positive one in all metagames in which the ban would occur (ie. in lower tiers).

Once this issue is resolved then we can move onto creating GSC 2U subsequently. This can be resolved either from discussion and a vote, or if there's a clear unanimous opinion towards only one solution then we can implement it without a vote.

I'm not a particularly capable GSCer so I don't have a strong opinion on this issue. I am keen however to have PP's GSC 1U finalised and to begin testing of GSC lower tiers.

 

[Disaster Area]

Tagging all of the signups thusfar for the GSC OU Season so that they are aware of this. Would like your opinions since it affects you the most.

Ortheore GGFan Contact Bomber SunnyR Peasounay Conflict Huston Mr.378 Mael Bedschibaer TSR Genio. marcoasd boom bye yeah Blim Texas Cloverleaf fapkingg Isa Haxel The_Joker Enigami El Tigre

 

[Ortheore]

I'll just go on record as saying that I think 1U's ruleset ought to be tested in terms of pokemon that are allowed or not, but I've accepted that not a lot of people want that and it's not going to happen so that's not important.

Personally, I'd lean towards a straight up trapping ban. Obviously it's simpler, which is nice, but also the fact is that PerishTrap is nothing more than RNG cheesing. There's little skill involved and overall I just think it's a toxic presence in the meta

 

[M Dragon]

Either keep it as ban ML + Sleep + PS or ban ML + Sleep

 

[Conflict]

- Use the SleepPerishTrap rule, so a Sleep Move + Perish Song + a Trapping Move is the illegal combination

 

[magic9mushroom]

Policy is paramount. Ubers must be reinitialised as 1A/1P and tested for 1U viability. To do otherwise would be a total abdication of what PP tiers mean - this isn't RBY, Ubers is if anything more balanced than OU.

(If there's not enough people to test Ubers, there's not enough people to test 2U anyway.)

EDIT: And I mean it's not like we can't keep current OU around as 1W or something even if Ubers does check out as 1U. I'm not trying to destroy a tier here, just name it systematically.

 

[Ortheore]

Just for the record I am adamantly against making the rule more finnicky than it already is. SleepTrap is still obnoxious and not worth implementing an even more complex ban in order to preserve it. My position is still that we ought to ban trapping altogether, since as far as I see it it's a win-win; we eliminate a cancerous strategy and simplify our ruleset at the same time. I really don't see any reason not to go through with the simpler ban other than "it's always been like that" which is incredibly feeble justification.

Also I agree with m9m that we ought to start with ubers, but the issue is that we're a community before we're a tiering project. Consequently making a huge change like that is not something we can easily do because if it alienates a lot of players (and there's every indication it would) then it's self-defeating as no-one would be playing and we'd lose a lot of interest. So that's why it's unlikely to go through anytime soon. By contrast, if we were to ban trapping moves that would represent a much more minor alteration to the tier environment, so I feel it's something we can realistically pursue. Having said that, I will back any push to make ubers the starting tier, there just needs to be some sort of support for it

edit: when I made this post I hadn't seen m9m's edit of the above post, I'd guess he made the edit literally as I was typing this

 

[magic9mushroom]

I really don't see any reason not to go through with the simpler ban other than "it's always been like that" which is incredibly feeble justification.

Well, the main thing is that trapping in and of itself is an interesting, non-luck-based mechanic and a full ban on Spider Web/Mean Look rips it out roots and all.

Also, a full trapping ban does alter OU a decent amount; Misdreavus dies, Umbreon loses a lot (even if it doesn't actually run ML, the threat of ML is very powerful), and the requirement for teams to run at least one phazer dies. Missy does affect the meta quite a bit, so that does have quite a few knock-on effects.

Also I agree with m9m that we ought to start with ubers, but the issue is that we're a community before we're a tiering project. Consequently making a huge change like that is not something we can easily do because if it alienates a lot of players (and there's every indication it would) then it's self-defeating as no-one would be playing and we'd lose a lot of interest. So that's why it's unlikely to go through anytime soon. By contrast, if we were to ban trapping moves that would represent a much more minor alteration to the tier environment, so I feel it's something we can realistically pursue. Having said that, I will back any push to make ubers the starting tier, there just needs to be some sort of support for it

Why would people be alienated? Like I said, I'm not proposing scrapping the OU tier, just not using it as the canonical 1U.

 

[The_Joker]

Also, a full trapping ban does alter OU a decent amount; Misdreavus dies, Umbreon loses a lot (even if it doesn't actually run ML, the threat of ML is very powerful), and the requirement for teams to run at least one phazer dies. Missy does affect the meta quite a bit, so that does have quite a few knock-on effects.

I totally support this: banning ML affects the meta and team building, so it isn't a small change. I would prefer to use the same rules used in bigger communities (i.e. PO and smogon), where SleepTrap is banned if I'm not wrong, in order to have a sort of uniformity. About the Perish itself, I hate that thing, but it is only a personal opinion and I don't think it is broken and, even if luck-based, not so strong to justify a ban.

 

[Ortheore]

Guys, I'm not saying a ML/SW ban would be insignificant, just that it's relatively small. If it didn't affect the meta at all there probably wouldn't even be a discussion on it since no-one would care, idk. I also think the knock-on effects are exaggerated, like just because it's not a strict requirement doesn't mean phazers are just gonna disappear. But whether it's a small change or not I don't think is an important point of discussion.

Regarding canonising ubers as 1a/1u and preserving gsc ou as some other variant: I actually really like this idea. The reason I didn't mention it initially was because when it was brought up in the past it didn't seem to affect anything- either ppl were still set against it or the fact that gsc ou gets preserved got overlooked. I'd really like to hear ppl's thoughts on this. And I really do want to add that even if it were the case, gsc ou isn't going anywhere anytime soon, since ultimately if there's demand for gsc ou, that'll get hosted. Given the sentiments that've been expressed here and in the past, I'd expect gsc ou's popularity to be far greater for a fairly long time. On the flipside, being an official tier would mean 1a/1u would get its fair share of tours, but at present I don't see us having the numbers to really give a tiering project a good crack (it's just it'd be nice to make a gsc tier "official"). Hopefully in the future that'll be different though.

I guess I should address the "alienating" I mentioned (fwiw when I made that post I hadn't seen m9m's edit). I think at this point most people just want to play gsc which is largely the same everywhere you go (with one exception), as opposed to exploring new territory with a proper 1a/1u. If we were to start from ubers, it could be perceived as marginalising OU (in practice I don't think it would) and also there's the sense that a handful of people are throwing their weight around and imposing their ideology on ppl rather than having an open discourse. It seems the type of thing to rub ppl the wrong way. Or at least, that's how I see it, I could be totally off-base with my speculation.

I totally support this: banning ML affects the meta and team building, so it isn't a small change. I would prefer to use the same rules used in bigger communities (i.e. PO and smogon), where SleepTrap is banned if I'm not wrong, in order to have a sort of uniformity. About the Perish itself, I hate that thing, but it is only a personal opinion and I don't think it is broken and, even if luck-based, not so strong to justify a ban.

The thing is that this rule isn't uniform. PO enforces SleepTrap (this is what's currently used in our seasons), while Smogon enforces SleepPerishTrap (incidentally, it does a really poor job of communicating this, the main site has nothing, and on the forums I had to look at the signups for an old tour to confirm). Whether or not you consider PO to still be relevant, the fact is that it (or Borat, if you prefer) undeniably left a big legacy in relation to this rule, such that I think many players consider it the standard (myself included), which creates a situation where the "standard" ruleset doesn't really have a consensus.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Sorry about the ninja edit.

If we were to go with a complex ban, the one I'd go for would probably be SleepTrap. There's at least some credible justification for that one, because sleeping a trapped Pokemon violates the spirit of Sleep Clause (without Sleep Clause, as I think I've said elsewhere, there's no special benefit to SleepTrap; it's just one part of the greater "sleep, sleep everywhere" issue).

 

[The_Joker]

The thing is that this rule isn't uniform. PO enforces SleepTrap (this is what's currently used in our seasons), while Smogon enforces SleepPerishTrap (incidentally, it does a really poor job of communicating this, the main site has nothing, and on the forums I had to look at the signups for an old tour to confirm).

Oh thanks for clarifying this! Well, I'm wondering if SleepTrap is enough broken to be banned; there are players that think that ML-pass is an unfair strategy (and this is the main reason to consider a ban of ML, imo), just think about ML-pass of a sleeping pokémon. By the way, the only poké that can do a SleepTrap and Pass is Smeargle, which is quite frail, but sometimes in a full bp can be enough to win the game; the other use of SleepTrap is Nightmare (Gengar and Jynx, both can use Substitute too), which is a garanteed 5hko of a sleeping pokémon: even in this case, it just depends on which poke you use to face the sleeper (a rest-talker should have the upper hand). I don't see ML in itself o ML+PS as cheap strategies: a well played phazer often does its job, but there are other ways to deal with them too. Thinking about it, SleepTrap is less broken than I thought, so I'm now 50/50 about its ban xD

 

[magic9mushroom]

ML-pass isn't a huge issue, TBH, because it's directly countered by phazing (breaks ML and even avoids the bad matchup Pass was trying to set up), although that obviously doesn't work against Smeargle ML-Spore-Pass. I'd prefer SleepTrap to SleepPerishTrap mostly because complex bans are cancer and SleepTrap is both simpler and can be passed off as closing a loophole in Sleep Clause (an existing complex ban, but an official one) rather than a balance ban or a competitiveness ban (the valid balance ban would be banning Misdreavus and possibly Gengar/Jynx from 1U; the valid competitiveness ban would be banning Mean Look or sleep moves).

 

[Lojh]

Also, a full trapping ban does alter OU a decent amount; Misdreavus dies, Umbreon loses a lot (even if it doesn't actually run ML, the threat of ML is very powerful), and the requirement for teams to run at least one phazer dies. Missy does affect the meta quite a bit, so that does have quite a few knock-on effects.

Missy doesn’t always have to run the common thunder missy ml perish song set, as in the current meta we see an influx of sleeptrap/curse/painsplit (which is not countered by phazing, and in the meta currently it is seen as a spinblocker with theif, toxic, thunder, and rest. The banning of ml would not vastly alter this ghost. On the other hand, banning mean look would be detrimental to the development of the tier because the threat of a ml + bp from umb and smeargle and the threat of Mean look perish song are not broken in their own right and are very viable and competitive sets.

What is uncompetitive though is sleeptrap. Sleeptrap is broken, and makes people run absurd counters to beat it. Smeargle attracts phazers which are then trapped, sleeped, and then sent to the seventh layer of hell by its counter. Sleeptrap missy relies on luck alone to best phazers, and is completely uncompetitive because it takes the game away from the players and turns it into a coin flip. Sleeptrap requires absurd counters like RestTalk Rhydon with roar and other sets that have no use but to counter sleep trap.

In the replay that you are about to see, My sleeptrap team completely takes the game away from costa, a great player. There was nothing he could have done to prevent it, and sleeptrap is completely broken and in my eyes deserves a ban.

Replay: [Gen 2] OU replay: FanOMG vs. Costa - Pokémon Showdown

TL;DR my position: ban sleeptrap, don’t ban trapping moves

 

[nicky]

To go off what Lojh said, I actually didn't know that Spider Web+Baton Smeargle with a sleep move was even legal to begin with. That makes absolutely no sense; why the heck is that allowed? It's even worse than the already banned Perish song sleep combo.

 

[Disaster Area]

TrapPassing has never been banned & is legal in ADV too. Umbreon is the main user of it in both gens however (using Mean Look + Baton Pass)

 

[Lojh]

Trap passing has always been a part of the metagame for a while. Makes people stay on their toes and run phazers. I think the maya imposter was trying to say sleep trap pass

 

[Disaster Area]

Well, SleepTrapPass is legal only if SleepTrap is legal. Here, we ban SleepTrap, so Spore+Spider Web smeargle is illegal in GSC 1U-L.

 

[Lojh]

Oh ok. Seems like It should stay that way. Trapping moves themselves are part of the meta and perfectly viable, same thing with Sleeping moves. removing either of these completely would bring too much harm to pokemon that can use them as viable options. (Probably umb be damaged the most because the threat of Mean Look is amazing to force switches & spikes damage)

Sorry about not understanding the current state of the ban in the beginning

 

[nicky]

Ok I see. So Smearg's Web+Sleep is forbidden on Poke Perfect but not Smogon. That's a good start. But I guess if Smogon is still using heavily outdated rulings in 2018, then they are never going to update. At least we know which site is the better of the two..