Explaining Every BANNED Ability In Competitive Pokémon (Gen 9 Almost Any Ability) 

I wonder if it works like that for Photo Geyser when Necrozma has a higher Atk than special as it is also technically a special move. Frosmoth has never been in a game with Necrozma on cartridge, tho Edit: Nvm apparently Necrozma came back in one of the swsh dlcs

@@handoverthestromboli6715Photon Geyser ignores abilities

@Light_2461 wtf why, when did gamefreak start just throwing random secondary effects on already broken signature moves. 😭

@@handoverthestromboli6715 It’s not really that broken tbh

@@handoverthestromboli6715It’s very tame lmao.

Eh, it's not that bad

Chansey with imposter>

​@@nathaneastman5556blissey > because you can use other item like choice scarf

@@legs9086Chansey still gets eviolite boost even when transformed

@@Crttyt67 that's what I said, you can use item other than eviolite

so would neutralizing gas. Literally they ban counterplay

​@@machinacheater7725neutralizing gas causes a game where the only ability people have is either neutralizing gas or abilities that bypass neutralizing gas Dont believe me? Check out pure hackmons :v

@@machinacheater7725 They don't ban "counterplay" (which doesn't really mean anything), they ban uncompetitive abilities like innards out Neutralising gas is kind of a different beat, not only is it insanely overpowered, but it also just really defeats the actual point of the meta. Metas with neutralising gas usually end up being heavily centered on neutralising gas (take pure hackmon for example) so it would essentially turn "almost any ability" into "almost no ability" and that's just not what the idea is Innards out and neutralising gas are easily some of the most powerful abilities on this list tbh, compared to stuff like fluffy/ice scales, illusion and whatnot. They're just not stuff you want in a competitive meta

And pure power the signature ability of Medical (and it's prevo)

@@napoleonbuonaparte8975 You presumably meant Medicham, but got hit by autocorrect?

Well of course it couldn't be called Yoga Power, Medicham isn't Fire type!

@@calvinanderson4245 That was actually a pretty good joke! Serious talk though, that got me wondering why they didn't call it Zen Power.

"Huge Power in Japanese is called 'Muscleman'" YOU KNOW WHO ELSE--

Smogon council: THIS MAN IS HAVING FUN! STOP HIM!

​@@PatrickArcatoin this case neutralizing gas is not making ppl have fun lol

@@oscen335 I quit singles in gen 7 cos smogon council simply can't handle anything

@@PatrickArcato theres a lot of councils lol, and neutralizing gas kinda defeats the whole point of AAA

@@oscen335 No it doesn't, it's a superior strategy, you can't handle it as well

As Gold

Eerste waar ik aan dacht

I don't think that's the case tbh, since stuff like Ice Scales, Illusion and so on will still be incredibly broken The format has a pretty solid meta, where you can predict most abilities based on the team n stuff, so it isn't really like that would change alot tbh

Not knowing the ability is a whole part of Pokémon! Even in OU! Flash fire / flame body heatran is the biggest one that comes to mind- difference between clicking pyroball or u turn when you have a cinderace against it 😮

Well, not necessarily. Knowing that your opponent has the ability doesn't mean you will be able to deal with them. Stakeout's danger, for example, doesn't come from not knowing the Pokemon has it but rather from the user applying pressure to force you to switch out. Another example is Imposter/Innards Out, knowing that your opponent has them has never really been much help. As someone who plays BH regularly Imposter is everywhere and simply knowing that its there forces you to play incredibly cautiously and it's very easy to start losing pokemon to well timed Imposters. Innards Out generally gets switched into an incoming KO so knowledge doesn't help there. Water Bubble just hits like a truck so playing around it without Desolate Land is just unreasonable.

Plus Iron Fist only multiplies punching moves by 1.2, not 1.5 like sharpness and (most egregiously) Strong Jaw. And it doesn't even stack with Punching Gloves!! You can't tell me that would be broken with the power creep of the last 2 gens.

Seeing as thunder/ice/fire fang moves and thunder/fire/ice punch both go to ~100 BP it seems on the surface like a good idea, but the other "fang" moves and with higher BP become way stronger.

@@BigStrap It does does it not? I've used punching glove ifist pawmot and it stacked?

Ledian getting Iron Fist is very fitting in terms of its design but it's so bad looking at its stats lmao. Its attack is so low it could run Huge Power and still be horrendous

@@kadabraguy9846 it isn't just ability but also move pool. It is an unfortunate support Pokemon who is too frail to take anything physically, too weak to hit hard, but also lacking in hp to endure the special attacks. Its only great stat is ironically its speed to run away. It gets a lot of setup moves that could help others but not much to save itself. Shane since its design is honestly quite nice.

I always have a good laugh with "council" 😂

@@Pao-vo8mf wym

I think it is because of how fun the ability can be but yeah very hard to counter on belly drummers with a healing move

Im pretty sure it got hariyama banned, at this point is actually crazy that triage isnt banned outrighg

@@koolguy475 the main problem is triage on mons that can set up to lethal levels in one turn. Belly drum for example

The idea is that you can just get spontaneously fucked over unpreventably because anything could have that ability and its impossible to know til its too late. The risk would be too high to justify even running the moves that get countered, and that makes shit boring. Also afaik with the format people can usually extrapolate who has what by virtue of what the meta is, but with abilities like these, you could put them on pretty much anyone.

All the cursed/funny/cool custom sprites when they get over shadowed by a speedy light fixture/j

Shedinja+Bisharp makes a Bug/Steel with Wonder Guard. Your only weakness is Fire (and because Wonder Guard sets your HP to 1 in IF, it doesn't matter that it's 4x), and you're immune to poison and samdstorm.

from what others are saying it sounds like most (good) players can guess what the ability is based on the meta, and most of the surprise factor bans are abilities you could put on literally anything and powerful enough you lose the game on the spot if you guess wrong arguably "the surprise factor is why its fun" is part of the reason _why_ its banned, because a lot of the fun is in trying to guess which ability an opponent has, and the banned abilities make the guess not remotely interesting its the difference between "shit i misjudged their team" and "oh i lost the 50/50 om which pokemon would be using the obviously broken ability, guess i lose now"

Do you have a source for this? I'm not seeing anything about it on Bulbapedia or Serebii

Give the man a source you phony

Give them aeriolate ability and noivern boomburst mwahahaha!

@@christopherroscoe145 Aerilate needs to be given to mons that aren’t Megas.

​@@christopherroscoe145you want to give dnite aeriolate STAB Espeed?

​@@potatoexe5410yes

Mold Breaker's still there, which nearly does the same thing! I agree though, Neutralizing Gas being unbanned would open up so many interesting counterplays

I mean mold breaker does work similar to Neutralizing gas, but only working on defensive abilities.

Ngas is out of the question. It opens up *too* many counterplays, and is just a catch-all solution to shut down literally any Pokémon so long as the ngas mon has a decent matchup. Not to mention, it’s incredibly lame to have a tier with Almost Any Ability centralized around an ability that nullifies abilities.

@@drew53768 Ngas is in no way shape or form at all even remotely comparable to mold breaker. It stops weather from activating, it stops regen as soon as you switch in, stops magic guard, stops sheer force, if you run it on setup it blocks primal weather from activating, prankster haze, intimidate and dauntless shield, triage, -ate priority, ruin abilities, basically yeah it stops any kind of counterplay Thing is not only is it insanely overpowered, but it also just really defeats the actual point of the meta. Metas with neutralising gas usually end up being heavily centered on neutralising gas (take pure hackmon for example) so it would essentially turn "almost any ability" into "almost no ability" and that's just not what the idea is

​@@motherlove8366 Almost No Ability is wildly overstating the impact it would have given that AAA has ability clause, meaning it would be limited to a single pokemon. The lack of an ability clause makes pure hackmon completely incomparable to how things would look in AAA if it was around. Neutralising Gas on everything would ruin the tier since you could just turn it into an abilitiless format by giving it to everything, but a single neutralising gas pokemon should be fine. Weathers will still activate on anything else, so requires the skill to predict exactly when the opponent will bring in their weather setter, and gets worn down if overused to deal with every ability on the team, and unless something went horribly weird in teambuilding, probably doesn't have a favourable matchup against the entire enemy team. 6 NG pokemon = No abilities for anyone 1 NG pokemon per team = A single check that can potentially stop a single broken combination from snowballing the entire game right away, but can be worn down. Sort of like how Electric Terrain + Regieleki teams played around the opponent almost always having a hard counter to their major win condition just by accident since ground was such a good type almost every team had at least one, and then would try to put their opponents in positions that would force them to bring it out and have it injured until it couldnt counter Regieleki anymore, allowing it to sweep.

Once setup a swoobat to skill swap to xerneas simple. It was super broken

Not really. Knowing that you can’t defog doesn’t change the fact that you can’t defog, knowing that your opponent has gorilla tactics doesn’t change the fact that it’ll nuke your entire team, knowing that your opponent can magic bounce doesn’t change the fact that you can’t set up hazards (although ig know your opponent didn’t have bounce would let you set up hazards? It’s a very centralizing ability either way and would be on most teams if it were legal) I can really only see this argument working for imposter, illusion, and innards out, which would *still* be incredibly problematic if they were legal in an ability preview meta

​@@gwenyon4939Seeing Magic Bounce would be useful if you have mold breaker tho.

@@napoleonbuonaparte8975 not really. I'm copying a top level comment I made because the video's assessment on magic bounce was not really correct The problem is not the unpredictability of not knowing who or what can have magic bounce, the problem is mainly that it forces games to come down to the bouncer vs setter matchup. If your bouncer can switch in on the hazard setter then you win, if the hazard setter beats your bouncer then you lose, this is kind of out of your control and while you normally level out matchups with good teambuilding, you just can't do that with individual mon matchup. I have to add tho as opposed to what gwenyon said, magic bounce has been legal for every gen except this one and has never had the kind of widespread usage that regen or poison heal had. It's always been contentious, but falls much more in the realm of uncompetitive than overpowered Also you can run ability shield on your bouncer to beat mold breaker As for the other, imposter changes nothing, because imposter will always be chansey and generally any chansey you see in preview will be assumed to be imposter. Imposter is just OP and AAA doesn't have the tools and flexibility to prepare for it the way BH does. Illusion would certainly be allowed if you knew both that it was present on the opposing team from preview and if you know which mon it was from preview. But even if you know there's illusion but you don't know which mon has the ability, you have to assume that any mon can be any other mon at any point, which is absurd. But illusion was definitely one of the weaker abilities on this list Innards out shouldn't exist and If you think unrestricted innards out deserves to be legal in any kind of competitive format you have no place being anywhere near making tiering decisions tbh

Mummy is far far more conditional, so I seriously doubt it

No, it would never

Depends on what you mean by stuff. The abilities banned in that format are almost identical to this one, so if we are talking abilties I would just be repeating myself

@@rozepanter007 Also, you should wait some weeks to do said video because the format got a massive shakeup recently via Smogon higher ups realizing what the rest of the community and even some members of Smogon already knew 7 months ago.

id just use a team with 6 neutralizing gas and just play like if it was pokemon lets go pikachu (wich doesnt have abilities)

Bruh Neutralising gas just completely makes it so there are no abilities in the game if you choose to run 6 mons with it

@jamesgiles4517 AAA has ability clause, you would be limited to just one NG mon

@mralexnui1919 okay in that context I guess it's okay but it would still defeat the whole point of the format

Gastro Acid says hello (Ik it’s not completely identical, but it’s similar).

Just run intimidate?

Terra electric air balloon Shedinja is basically that.

@@napoleonbuonaparte8975 i guess, but shedinja is still crap. It’s stats are god awful, and it still only has one health, so even a single turn of status or weather damage and it’s dead. Not so for spiritomb, who is a solid special attacker, and actually has health to work with, meaning it can easily prevent any and all ways of taking it down. Basically gimmick shedinja is just the dollar store version of wg spiritomb.

Numel using Stockpile + Simple has given it a reputation as a Little Cup tank as well

And your opponent 1st move is : Safeguard.

@@Rncko I completely forgot about that possibility. Then that entirely just makes you reliant on mold breaker. I also realized that you can use this on any pokemon you can tera into electric type.

@@ammymara4868 partial trapping and residual also works

It’s banned due to how centralizing it is. It wouldn’t just check degenerate combos, it would check *everything*

On top of "checking degenerate combos", it's also mad overpowered when ran on offensive mons or setup sweepers For a short list of what ngas can do - It stops weather and terrain from activating - It stops regen as soon as you switch in, rendering the ability essentially unviable - Stops magic guard and can make magic guard mons auto die when you switch in - Stops poison heal If you run it on setup it blocks - Primal weather from activating - Prankster haze or prankster dbond - Intimidate and dauntless shield - Triage or -ate priority - Ruin abilities from checking you Basically yeah it's not so much that ngas is counterplay to other stuff, but more than ngas itself has no counterplay And tbh on top of all that, the fact that it would defeat the point of the meta and would be so centralising, just means that the AAA playerbase would plummet imo

Considering water bubble is not only a 2x boost (compared to strong jaws 1.5x) and *also* prevents you from being crippled by a burn, I think the answer is pretty obvious.

Nope, it was because of Drizzle. I love Pelipper and all but it would have been garbage without that ability. 95 special attack isn't even that good.

@@youtubeneedstochange4414 there are other water/flying types that were pu or untiered with better spcatk its definitely drizzle that made pelipper good, same with politoed

ahh wrong person to reply to but ohwell he gets a notification anyways

In a meta where primordial sea and desolate land is everywhere, weather is always going to be an inconsistent & fishy strategy, so drizzle isn’t broken in the slightest.

The surprise factor couple with stronger mons means they're unhealthy for the meta. If something gets used so often that you have to constantly plan around it, it makes sense to ban it so that you can just focus on doing wacky strategies.

@@AnArmoredMarch And yet Stealth Rock has never been banned.

@@SuperWigglerI personally dislike Stealth Rock, but this is a false equivalence. You generally know which Pokemon will use Stealth Rock, and countering it isn't a huge commitment (one or two moveslots on a team, or an item slot on a particularly rock-weak Pokemon). On the other hand, a powerful ability like Magic Bounce in AAA could be on any Pokemon, you don't know if your opponent even has it, let alone which Pokemon has it, until it's revealed, and once it is revealed in a lot of cases the best counter to a given ability is spending an ability slot on a specific counter ability (e.g. Mold Breaker against Magic Bounce, Water Absorb against Water Bubble).

The reason is that AAA tiering has improved over the generations. The general consensus among current players is that old gens were kept “just barely playable.” Also, precedent has changed from banning Pokémon to banning abilities if said ability is broken on most Pokémon

Moves that induce sleep are banned in the format.

Destiny bond has the same counterplay as it does in every format (which is knowing which mons are going to click it), and 100% sleep inducing moves are banned because of no guard + hypnosis.

because dazzling is already used for priority but not just triage. It can be used to block sucker punch aqua jet and e speed which are common moves

Lol I left almost the exact same comment without seeing this. It’s because the council keeps voting no ban on it despite nearly every community survey have it as potentially unhealthy and never putting out a suspect test. The argument has been that because there are bad/checkable triage users (chesnaught, hatterene), that it’s not the ability that’s the issue, but the mons themselves. Though I don’t think that argument rlly justifies keeping it

You must not know about the scarf psychic surge amourouge tech

@@bobfrank7339 I mean if ur running that on a team then yea that kind of highlights the issue of triage

The meta now is if your team auto looses triage cheese then it’s not a good team. I can see why it’s not immediately broken because you know which mons will run it, so you can prepare for it. It just makes team building a little harder.

Steely Spirit, Steelworker and Rocky Payload are all 1.5, water bubble is a 2x boost, makes you immune to burn and gives you a fire resist I think part of it is also that water is a much better offensive type with a much wider array of move and distribution

Tiering in general likes to avoid complex bans (Although idk why this is not the case with nd bh)

OHKO cluase are never allowed in any of the smogon singles format except AG. Even without no guard it would be too powerful in OU and whatnot.

Situational, the only reasonable use of mummy is to switch on regen mons uturning to take out their regen and give them rocky helmet damage, but other than that it's not really a good ability

I know right? Could put it on Tapu koko and it would now have electric surge AND a boost in stats

The ground type helps a lot with that decision

Too many U's

That move is based on accuracy, so I don't think skill link will work

You can run no guard kings rock maushold, it's legal. It's just not very good

@@sctproperties13 it does work,always hit 10 times for me

Contrary V-Create Primal Groudon too. I hate/love that thing

Tinted Lens doesn't increase your max damage output, it only makes attacks do neutral damage at best. Stakeout can make both your powerful STAB and coverage moves deal double damage

So are you saying that if wonder guard was restricted to only non-electric types, it would somehow be fine?

@@motherlove8366 idk

Toxic Heal not only gives constant Healing but also you become inmmune to status effects. Stakeout is literally the effect of pursuit on every move no matter how strong It is

When you don’t think something out but then call the format not though out

stakeout is a bigger boost than adaptability, giving it a pseudo-trapping effect, which is considered uncompetitive cuz you have such limited counterplay. regenerator forces you to switch out to heal, so you can't abuse it on a bulky setup sweeper like you can with toxic heal. Not to mention the status immunity.

@@jettca everyone gets u-turn, that seems kinda free to me

There are literally 2 viable regen mons with u-turn (and calling rmoon a “viable” regen mon is a stretch). Especially with 1 ability clause, you want your regen slot to be able to take special hits more than you want it to pivot (unless you’re play BO, but even then running melo for u-turn is kinda scuff)

imposter hackmons are just a crutch. they are the same shit in balanced hackmons that snorlax was in gen 2 ou. too overcentralizing but the kiddos who rely on the strat to keep their ladder placement are like NUUUU! DON'T MAKE ME USE REAL STRATEGIES a lot of people wank about banning chansey, but chansey isn't the problem, imposter is. similarly, gen 2 snorlax itself isn't what is busted, it's specifically sleep talk. sleep talk in gen 2 is broken because it can call rest and only deduct the sleep talk PP, and your health will be restored. this gives snorlax too much staying power. i use choice scarf ditto all the time in vanilla play, but it's not a hackmon it's an intended game mechanic. ditto is real good when played right. it shows how powerful of an ability imposter is. people who waste their ditto trying to beat a defensive mon instead of a +6 sweeper make me giggle. that's not how you ditto

Snorlax is worse in Gen 2 OU than Imposter Chansey in BH. At least the latter can be hard countered with "imposter-proof" sets. But imposter-proof, the very concept, is proof that Imposter is overcentralizing and too strong for BH. Ban Imposter and just allow Transform. But anyway, Snorlax's problem is that there isn't really a good counter to it in Gen 2. Fighting types kinda suck in Gen 2 and Curse boosts Snorlax's defense so high, you pretty much need a lucky crit. Cross Chop only has 80% accuracy, so it usually loses a game of attrition with Snorlax.

Cuz otherwise it becomes unplayable shit, duh. Why does anything get banned.

Cuz’ Huge Power Zacian-Crowned

You can’t have both prankster and comatose lol

@@nomongosinthaworldnew As One

@@nib1448LMFAOOOOO

@nomongosinthaworld not what I was saying,... to stop Comatose sleeptalk, prankster-taunt was an option, that can be disabled with being dark type.

@@TheRedAzuki aight sure but your original comment was missing a ton of information in that case lol

Incorrect, the broken and uncompetitive stuff is banned. The reason it's banned is to actually have a fun meta, and not a shitty mess

This mf 'boutta play AAA with Neutralizing Gas and call it "FuN"

I recognize it as an aggresively dutch accent. Roze panter is also a dutch translation for Pink Panther. I also sometimes wonder if he really speaks english like this or if he is just overdoing the accent. I like his videos a lot though.