What makes a pokemon broken?

[NinjaDeathStrike]

Hey guys I stumbled across a really interesting article today and though I would share it here. It discusses what truly makes a pokemon pokemon, and whether or not things get banned simply because people refuse to adapt to them. There are some very good points made on both sides, and it's a great read for anyone who is seriously interested in the state of the competitive pokemon community. Feel free to share your own thoughts about the points made in a rational and well thought out manner below.

Read the discussion here.

[Shark]

Points that stand out to me:

SPOILER: Click to show

Pocket:
Once people are forced to utilize "less useful" monsters to counter a specific mon, or when a certain threat requires a more specialized counter / check / consideration, then it is questioned to be uber material (it promotes 'overcentralization,' it is 'overpowering, it is 'unhealthy' for the metagame). I believe that the currently banned suspects indicate this trend.

There is also the luck factor, where an amazing monster mixed with a little luck = bullshit (see Shaymin-S and Garchomp).


Gerald:
if slowbro was on every team Blaziken wouldn't have been made uber, at the same time if tyranitar is in almost every team things like Latios will at least have a common weekspot, and become manageable, the commonness, reliability and usefulness of a check is what points out how uber is a pokemon

astrohawke:
I'm sick of people telling me excadrill is crap because everyone and their mother has a gliscor and therefore has no troubles handling him. Well what if I want to make a team without gliscor? So then they list for me a bunch of random pokemon like skarmory (who loses to excadrill like 90% of the time), azumarill and hitmontop (who are UU and not even counters) and say I can use one of those. Fuck no I can't because they're either not very good counters, shit pokemon in general or not counters at all.

So basically it comes down to gliscor being the only decent solid counter. There are shaky counters, checks if you will, like skarmory and bronzong but I'll be damned if I'm gonna rely on a shaky counter when it basically sweeps you once it gets past said counter with no way to revenge kill it since nothing outspeeds.

I don't want to make this post entirely about excadrill but it's pokemon like this that make every team carbon copies of the next one. Adapting to it by using gliscor does not change the fact that it's causing an undesirable metagame by forcing any team that hopes to be decent to use gliscor. We are losing sight of what we're trying to achieve with the voting. Instead of trying to create a more desirable and varied metagame, we merely end up working around these threats and only ban when it proves to be too hard to do so.

I think that the main difference between something like excadrill and gen 4 heatran is what actually counters/checks it. Heatran had a lot of checks/counters such that you could stop it in a variety of ways and didn't restrict team building. Excadrill and to a certain extent latios and thunderus don't. It's either carry X or lose a pokemon every time it comes in or in the case of excadrill it's carry gliscor or face the risk of getting swept entirely. The result is that every team ends up with X for latios, Y for thunderus, Z for excadrill and so on. We would have no troubles with kyogre either. Every team just need to carry a gastrodon like every team carries a gliscor. But that doesn't really make the metagame any good does it?

Alphatron:
I'd say you were right on the money. The banning of pokemon does indeed come down to personal prefernce based on the experiences the qualified voters have had in the metagame, and there is no set rule to dictate what is broken and what isn't broken.

A voter can choose a pokemon who may not actually be broken, but gave them a lot of trouble while they were laddering. But this is fine since the voters are trying to build a metagame that they enjoy, and as they are the ones playing the game the most, it only makes sense that they get to decide this, right?

So outside of the blatantly powerful pokemon whom the community can universally on, there isn't really anything to judge a pokemon's power level outside of, "Does the current metagame handle him well and at what lengths do they have to go through to do it."

I agree that if slowbro and azumarrill were high end OU pokemon, then blaziken probably would not have been taken as seriously.

jas61292:
As people have already brought up, there is no objective way of determining if something is overpowering or over-centralizing. It just does not exist. As much as people hate to admit it though, I really think over-centralization is the real reason behind almost all bans. People like variety, and when something limits variety to a great extent, people will view the metagame as better without it, as they are no longer forced to run certain things just to beat it.

wtangelo:
A metagame should be something that requires experience or knowledge to use properly.
If a 12 year old kid thats never played pokemon before walks into a battle with a team of six Ubers, odds are they would have a fighting chance against an experienced player with 6 OUs. Basically the idea is, if you can get better with them, they aren't broken. Anyone can get a KO with a Ho-Oh, it takes talent to kill with Sentret.

Those are just my personal views of course.

Myrmidon:
Compare this to a metgame where the strongest players keep overpowered pokemon in the metagame so they can win...random players do some light research, make a top-tier team, and trounce new players.

Compare to Yugioh. During the chaos-era, there was a LOT of hullabaloo about a 12-year old winning worlds. This wasn't because he was good at the game, or well informed...it was because the deck literally played itself; anyone with enough money and a decent grasp of the rules could win.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't want a metagame like that.

Tobes:
And the term broken is subjective, as I have said before. Yes, Zephiel, there will always be "broken" Pokemon to the individual, but that does not mean there will always be "broken" Pokemon to the community. We follow the community's subjectivity, not the individual's. If the communtiy says it's broken, then it's "broken", and we ban it. That's really all there is to it.

astrohawke:
What I got was that broken pokemon aren't being seen as broken because their checks/counters are very high usage pokemon (gliscor for excadrill, ttar/scizor for latios etc). AKA we have adapted in such a way that we are no longer banning everything that's broken and only banning what we don't feel like adapting to (using slowbro for blaziken, using bronzong/skarm for garchomp etc).

In other words, we aren't banning enough and the metagame is made up of carbon copy teams full of counters to these top threats. You could say there will always be top threats which is true but at some point, these top threats will have a large number of viable counters such that it actually allows for team diversity. At that point, the metagame is balanced and things no longer need to be banned.

The OP suggests that right now, people say "I have no trouble with latios because I just pursuit it with ttar" or "I have no trouble with excadrill because I can wall it with gliscor" which is just adapting. What happens when I don't want to build a team that includes ttar and gliscor? Then these "manageable" (some even say weak) threats are no longer so manageable.

(Later on..)
What exactly does a balanced metagame mean to you? Is it one where nothing is able to rampage unchecked through teams? Most things aren't able to anyway because teams adapt. If kyogre became OU, every team would suddenly be using chanseys and gastrodons. It still wouldn't sweep. Does that mean it's not broken? To me, a balanced metagame is just one that allows for diversity. Without being forced to use the same 2 counters to stop a pokemon on every team. What about you?

RocketSurgery:
Can you realistically deal with all of the threats, though? You have only six pokemon and 24 moves - is that really enough to adapt to every threat out there? That's not a rhetorical question. You have six pokemon to deal with literally hundreds of potential threats. I really would like to know if one can build a team that can reasonably deal with all of these threats (at least more often than not)? If the answer is no, then can the answer be changed to yes by removing a limited (and small) number of pokemon?

It may be possible to adapt to a given pokemon, but is it really possible to adapt to all pokemon? If you can only adapt to a select number of threats, would it improve the metagame by removing some threats (likely those that require the most preparation to beat)? I think these are the questions that need answering in a debate over whether to ban or try to adapt.

SlimMan:
However, not every team needs one of these; on the contrary, only two of these are even OU! However, Salamence is not broken by any means. Some teams will force it to use Outrage, then switch in a Steel-type. Some teams will carry a revenge-killer for it. And so on and so forth. A team doesn't have to "counter" each and every threat!!!


Lastly, this whole "you need to deal with things" mentality is good for teambuilding, but only to an extent. Someone once wrote a grand something on this topic. It went to the effect that it you focus on countering the opponent's Pokemon, they'll be leading you the whole match. They'll be controlling the whole match. You should instead worry about executing your own strategy, to actually win the match. You want to beat your opponent, not counter them.

TheGuyWhoIsSitting:
The problem is that if you have the "Just deal with it" mentality, then that basically implies that we should only have an ubers tier, because if you just deal with it the metagame will shape accordingly and to me that isn't balance, that's just trying to run X to counter Y or check Y. Like people have said, if Kyogre was OU people would use Blissey/Chansey and other Pokemon like Gastrodon to "just deal with it" and then we'd get to the point where everything would just be OU and we wouldn't have an ubers tier. Can't beat Darkrai? Just run a Vital Spirit Primeape, can't deal with this just run this.

The test it mentality is alright, but honestly some of the bans and rules that have come from 5th gen haven't really solved any of the problems. For example, there's nothing stopping you from running a Swift Swim team that takes advantage of the opponents infinite rain, or running a team that lets you deal with all types of weather by taking advantage of their weather in ways they can't. It'd be the same way if Sand Veil and Sand Storm got banned on the same teams, people would still use Garchomp in the way it was used before it was banned, they just wouldn't be able to run it with Tyranitar or Hippowdon on the same team, and seeing how TTar is the most used Pokemon it's not like you'd really have trouble getting permanent sand. I know I've been swept by Swift Swim Kingdra with my own rain before, so it only takes care of your team itself abusing it while the opponent is free to run Kingdra and the others.

The "Ban it" mentality, well I can't say I disagree with some of the things people find broken but I believe things need to be tested, but who should test them? I know some players like to use whatever is the best and they aren't going to want to get rid of their play style. I can't see a lot of people using sandstorm teams saying "Sandstorm is broken, we should ban it." Honestly in a community where everyone has their own opinion, how can you really determine what should be banned?

Every time something is banned there's some sort of outrage over it, like Blaze Blaziken, or just Garchomp in general, if we don't ban anything, the metagame would still be full of Darkrai and Skymin and people would be using the "Just deal with it" mentality still. Since whatever handles Darkrai would be in the top of the tier, that's no reason to not ban something just because a handful of Pokes can handle it and that somehow keeps it balanced for the teams that don't run whatever it is. I imagine Conkeldurr and Primeape would be high in useage to deal with Darkrai if it was still OU

Sensei Bobbilytus:
In my understanding for most competative games, banning threats is based on the fact that something is "unhealthy for the format". The concept of a single pokemon dictating what should and shouldn't be used is pretty unhealthy I think. See Garchomp for example. I'm sure it's been mentioned, but the damage T-tar does to the format is signifigant. Look back to when he was introduced. Psychic went from the most over-powered type to a check for fighting-types, and a bad one at that. Because of Steel and Dark types, psychics got a severe shaft and now fighting types dominate because of how many types they can bend in half. Most psychics that do see use MUST run Focus Miss just to be competitive.

Let's not forget how the internet views Smogon; We'd so much as ban Delibird if it got a lucky kill on a Garchomp. I am always in favor of any choice that allows more variety in teams, not less, and I feel like unbanning a lot of threats and this notion of "adapting the metagame" has little to do with pokemon actually being broken or not, and more to do with people's willingness to run the same pokemon over and over on every team. Are pokemon like Magnezone or Mamoswine really worth running, just because they stop some potent big-guys? Or do we put up with a couple of bigger guys just because lesser pokes like these have a single advantage to stop them? Is the requirement then FOR banning that a pokemon is near-unstoppable? Or should we try and maintain a healthy format and try and ban threats that warp and shape formats around themselves like Tyranitar? I know I can't say.
(read the whole post it's mid page 4)

Nkululeko:
@the OP, I gues I'll echo the sentiment that this raises a really good point. Even though it is technically posssible to adapt to every threat in the Dex it's not practical to need to adapt to certain ones (hypothetically speaking, like a Ho-Oh in OU because doing successfully adapting to it would likely render your team overspecialized and largely useless otherwise) and we ban the pokemon that introduce that particular dilema into the metagame. However, we've seen a rise in (don't quote me outside of the thread on this bs phrase) what I'll call selective countering for now. Players have risen to the occasion of countering very powerful threats (like Latios, Thundurus, Excadrill, Reuniclus, etc.) but in some cases just refuse to counter others like Blaziken (Aqua Jet anyone? Azu counters a lot of things and Jellicent walled that thing to hell and back, esp in Rain which is a respectable 10+% of the time)and Garchomp ( seriously some people acted as if all weather not named Sandstorm vanished when 'Chomp came on the field and nobody had reliable Ice moves or EQ switch-ins). Whereas some pokemon likely will never be retested in OU (in the current climate, everything that would need a retest to be in OU) there's a case to be made when players refuse to be bothered with adapting to the metagame and want something banned purely because they crap their pants when they see it in Team Preview.

Props to alphatron for making this thread so I can get this off my chest and I want to clarify that even though there is the legitimate argument that competitively viable teams shouldn't be forced to use one or two pokemon or be swept by a common pokemon every time I feel that it's an equally legitimate argument in saying that there should be an effort on everyone's behalf to adapt to certain threats in the metagame instead of running to the Suspect Thread and spamming OMG EXCADRILL'S UBER, or something to that effect when our time and energy would be better spent seeing if countering a poke leaves too many holes in your team.

That's my gist, but it's also semi-fuled by my opinion, so feel free to read the whole thing, but this skips quotes and lots of senceless arguing.

Applying this to our Ban list, I think what we could do, as a MUCH smaller community than smogon, is have a small debate (that stays on topic) of major threats that come up. Ones that have few things to defeat it, and are therefore too hard to defeat, can be banned. That's what I get from this.

On that same note, if it cannot be properly described why it should be banned, we shouldn't ban it. This is the most tedious way of doing things, but definatly the most thorough.