Void

shut the FUCK up

really

kamina trying to trash talk, that's cute LOL

the default happiness value on showdown is actually 255, so frustration makes more sense

yeah this should be pretty simple, just differentiate twice while treating y as a constant, then differentiate twice treating x as a constant you should get: fxx = 2ey fyy = x2ey

happy birthday bro

been workin out recently, acquired aesthetics. bet all of yall mirin these gains now hehe

ECH0: crit is the key to beating stall ECH0: that is why they were invented said like a true lucky and bad player

LC is way way way more centralized than OU, I'm not sure how you arrived at the conclusion that it's less so. ORAS OU is an incredibly diverse tier (too diverse some might say), there are so many viable pokemon, so many options, and you're always in danger of being taken out by some obscure threat. LC, on the other hand has always been one of the least diverse tiers, certain mons like mienfoo get ridiculously high usage statistics.

It wasn't directed at you in particular bro, there were a few people that post could apply to.

yo peeps, I haven't watched any of the fate series yet and would like to start. what order would you guys recommend I watch this in?

Competitive battlers have been making the distinction between centralized and overcentralized for ages now, that's how the term overcentralized came about in the first place. Overcentralizating the metagame is one of reasons listed by smogon for banning a pokemon. 'Centralizing' simply refers to the top threats and their counters being of the utmost importance in the metagame, which is perfectly fine not to mention unavoidable. Even if we ban the pokemon you've mentioned, the next best and most viable pokemon will 'centralize'. Overcentralization is when the metagame revolves around a single pokemon - which is exactly what aegislash does. What the tiering system tries to do is to eliminate luck from the game as much as possible. Hax happens in pokemon, but does that mean swagplay should be allowed again? Or should we ban stuff like serene grace jirachi for the sake of 'fighting it 100 percent of the way through'? You're exactly right about what I was implying - Pokemon is a game that can be made to be as skill dependent as possible, that is the very reason smogon created their brand of competitive battling.

I personally voted for metagrossite to be banned on the smogon suspect, so I'm not disagreeing with you there. As I said before, a distinction must be made between centralizing and overcentralizing. The best pokemon always centralize, what must be looked at is the degree of centralization. Lopunny is nowhere near as centralizing as aegislash, heatran and landorus-t aren't centralizing at all. High popularity/usage stats doesn't necessarily mean a mon is centralizing, there are so many answers to heatran and landorus-t that your team will most likely have answers for them even if you don't keep checking them in mind while teambuilding. The fact is, none of the current OU pokemon centralize the meta anywhere near as much as aegislash. It alone forced nearly every physical attacker to run earthquake, mandibuzz was OU only because it countered this thing. Looking at the new megas introduced in ORAS, lopunny checks it ONLY if it carries encore. On the other hand, it checks or counters far more new introductions, like altaria, metagross, diancie (most aegi run shadow ball btw, which ohkos mega metagross). This actually means that in ORAS, aegislash becomes even more centralizing than it was in XY. You must also realize that on smogon, the effect of tiering changes on top-level play is more important than the effect on average and low-level play. This is because at lower levels, people generally make multiple sub-optimal plays in one game, which makes it difficult to know whether outcomes occur because of the pokemon being used or because of the players themselves. Now, at the highest level, aegislash reduces many games to 50/50s. Not that it's uncommon for games to come down to 50/50s, but aegislash will cause this to happen far more often than it should, to the extent that creative teambuilding and actual good reading of the game go out of the window in some instances. It's not really a critique of suspect tests, no one has thought of a better system thus far so the current one is perfectly fine. However, people seem to be assuming what they've seen while they're still on low ladder is a good representation of what an aegislash metagame will actually be like, which is preposterous. Higher ladder and the newly announced suspect tournaments will give a far better idea of what it would actually be like. I think you misunderstand what 50/50s are - skill in pokemon is knowing what the optimal plays are, being able to read the game well and knowing at all times what your opponent's possible plays are. '50/50 predictions' do not quite fall under the same category, as this is pure guesswork. Most predictions in pokemon are not 50/50s, there is usually a move that your opponent is most likely to go for. The kind of coinflip predictions that aegislash forces aren't like this - there are two options, king shield or attack, and you have no way of knowing which it'll go for as long as your opponent is halfway decent. Ubers is first and foremost the OU banlist, to the fullest extent. There is no debate to be had about this, this is how the tiering system Smogon have created has worked since day 1. On smogon, users are regularly told to refrain from using the viability of suspected pokemon in ubers as an argument. If you disagree with how this works, that is perfectly fine, but we are discussing this in the context of the smogon tiering system, so we should stick to it. Not to mention aegislash being unviable in ubers is purely your opinion, I believe it works perfectly well as a utility mon in ubers. Smogon's uber council (people who actually play ubers at the most competitive level) also agree with me, having given it a B rank viability. In any case, aegislash's viability in ubers is irrelevant to this discussion, this is a fact and not subject to dispute.

guess i'll go ahead and post something nice for OU Victini @ Expert Belt Ability: Victory Star EVs: 76 Atk / 192 SpA / 240 Spe Rash Nature - Thunder - V-create - Glaciate - Focus Blast beats a lot of common victini switchins, like lando-t and heatran. glaciate speed drop followed by the appropriate move takes care of nearly anything that tries to switch in.

Overall, I feel like the positives of bringing this back are far outweighed by the negatives. Like before, people will simply slap aegislash on their teams because by having aegislash on your team, you automatically check such a huge slew of threats. This creates a very aegislash-centric metagame, where almost everyone has a team that consists of aegislash + aegislash lure/check/counter + sweeper that appreciates aegislash being gone. It will have a huge (negative) impact on the diversity of the metagame. One of the main selling points of ORAS OU right now is the diversity, you see a lot of generally under-appreciated/lower tier pokemon being used in top-level tournament games (not so much on the ladder, but it should be no surprise that the average player will have less confidence to go against the grain), and bringing aegislash back will ruin this for the most part. What exactly has changed in ORAS to make dealing with aegislash easier anyway? Out of the new megas, lopunny can beat with it IF you win the king shield 50/50s. By definition, it doesn't even qualify as a check. The thing about aegislash is that there isn't 1 trait alone that makes it broken, it's the whole package. The typing, the 50/50s forced by king shield, the utility, the versatility (it can run physical, special AND stall sets) all add up. Many pokemon that check one set will lose to another set, and the few pokemon such as mandibuzz that can take on both the offensive sets are badly crippled by the sub toxic stall set. I don't know why people are bringing up the fact that they haven't seen many aegislashes on the ladder so far, is this supposed to mean something? First of all, your first 20 or so games will be against low ladder players, those battles mean absolutely nothing. Furthermore, games on the suspect ladder, especially when the suspect ladder has only just gone up, are not at all an accurate representation of what the metagame will actually be like once it settles down should aegislash be unbanned. I'd also like to add the the ubers metagame is NOT taken into account when deciding what should or should not be banned from OU. Ubers is first and foremost an OU banlist, and the viability of pokemon sent to ubers is not a concern. Also, hilda is correct in saying that there will always be centralizing pokemon in any metagame. This is why a distinction between centralizing and overcentralizing has to be made; there will always be centralizing pokemon, but overcentralizing pokemon are downright unhealthy for a metagame.

no, poison heal gliscor did not exist in gen IV

he's respected and mature, of course n_n

the odds of running into a venusaur with BOTH sleep powder and leech seed is extremely low, sleep powder in itself is pretty rare too because venusaur generally can't afford to have one of its moveslots taken up by it. even in the case that you run into that 1 in 10000 venusaur that runs both sleep powder and leech seed, it firstly needs probably a 3 turn sleep (the maximum amount) and some lucky damage rolls to avoid the 2hko, on top of hitting leech seed and sleep powder which both have imperfect accuracy. even if you make the argument that venusaur can still win if it's a worst case scenario, if you simply switch another mon on your team into the sleep powder, that stops being a problem. I don't think getting beaten with some luck by a venusaur set that doesn't really exist means dragonite is not a venusaur counter.

you should probably add double dance lando-t to the list of sets, it isn't very popular for some reason but definitely a very threatening sweeper

kamina makes them so late cause he's scared i'll join and win otherwise :[

i think species clause should stay, and make an exception only for letters that don't have 6 pokemon

unlike most other playstyles, it can be pretty helpful to follow a standard template for hyper offense teams. a simple build like this generally works: lead (SR setter, or weather starter if you're building a weather based team) wallbreaker #1 wallbreaker #2 / weather abuser if weather team sweeper revenge killer (scarfer or priority user) utility (normally some sort of hazard removal that can hit hard, like latios, excadrill, offensive starmie) if you're trying to build a weather based hyper offense team, you'll notice that many pokemon can actually perform more than one of those roles, like excadrill in sand who can be a sweeper, revenge killer and utility all in one. in this case you have a bit more freedom with the remaining slots. for example, on a rain team since most rain abusers can double as a revenge killer, this gives you space to run maybe another rain abuser. in any case, if you have already filled up all the required roles but still have a free slot or two on your team, just use it to try and patch up any weaknesses on your team. the term 'weaknesses' on hyper offense generally refers more to defensive threats rather than offensive threats btw, because with this playstyle you should be more worried about what walls you rather than having counters for things.

yeah mega gallade is definitely not a counter lol, and it's only a check if healthy @jericho: steadfast boost doesn't happen if you switch in, because you aren't 'flinched' when switching in

nice avatar