Why aren't you using an adblocker? uBlock Origin is definitely available on whatever browser you're using and you wouldn't have to deal with the ads in your videos anymore.
There's nothing more nostalgic than a battle video from a japanese-translated pokemon game, even the pokés have their jp-spelled names! Reminds me of the days of platinum where as soon as it came out in japan, we were recording battle videos on our R4s with the half-japanese half-translated english game, using bullet punch scizor🤗
The decision to ban dynamax very early in gen 8 seems to illustrate the change in the community. They could have very well refer to Aldaron's proposal by saying that dynamax is a defining feature of gen 8 and therefore can't be banned. But they decided not to go that way, probably for the better.
@@Fig_Bender I wouldn't say it's "good" for VGC, just not broken like it is in singles. It's still incredibly boring with the way it just ignores your moveset choices to give you the pre-set max moves, just a more complex z-crystal.
I don’t hate Aldaron’s proposal being accepted initially. But I hate it still being in effect after ban after ban showed what a toxic influence rain is on the meta.
In contrast to this I wanna bring up the least controversial ban of all time being B/W Skymin. Which I'm pretty sure is the only ban that was Unanimous from a community vote/suspect test not just a quickban/council vote.
one funny note is that darkrai and deoxys attack were on the same slate and they didn't even get 100% shaymin is so fucking annoying even the 2 lunatics that thought deoxys attack was a perfectly acceptable prescene in ou wanted that bitch gone
@@SPZ-gv2on don’t remember what the results were once all votes were cast but once the decision was final it was a massively overwhelming 86% in favor of not banning.
Literal translation of 熱湯 which is the Japanese move name. Also character limitations for nicknames and move names. The Japanese word is implied to be “boiling hot water” scald makes sense but this was before the official language translation and people were mad that “the names changed” some patches also changed it to “boil over” from what I remember. 😂 Fun times.
Man this takes me back. I remember at the time people dogmatically defending this complex ban. Glad to see history vindicating the caveman thinking of "this ban too complex it dumb". Truly the bell curve meme at work with the 2 tails of the graph agreeing for different reasons. Also does anyone remember the Gen 4 testing of level 1 Kyogre/Groudon in OU? I swear it happened. I think it was just a brief side test thing, but during that time people thought perma rain on a level 1 mon was broken for gen 4 OU. And then we get to gen 5 and think it is fine on a real mon.
I feel bad for Gen 5 now. Every time I've heard of Gen 5 comp since its' launch has been them having to remove yet another thing for breaking the metagame. Between Stuff like this kind of ban, Sand Rush Excadrill being banned, and the more recent Sleep and Gems bans, it gives off the impression that Gen 5 as a whole just wasn't made to be played competitively.
It’s honestly fitting that the game set in the mainland US equivalent (Alola does not count because it being based off of Hawaii means that it has a far different attitude than what Unova maps to, and by then “preserving mechanics” was no longer an issue) is the game with the most broken competitive scene to the point that it probably would take twenty years to get it into a playable state.
Yeah the power spike in gen 5 was absurd. Base stats on new pokemon were higher. The designs were stronger. The added moves were huge. And even items were strong. Wasnt this where gems were added and then immediately removed from the games in gen 6? Even gamefreak knew they were broken. I wish in response to the power spike they went back and tuned more of it down but I think by gen 7 they managed to cool some things off enough to be pretty great. I even didnt hate ferrothorn with all my soul by gen 7 anymore. I always had a dedicated "fuck ferrothorn" pokemon on my team for ages. Landorus-T was not my moby dick.
It seems like they actually added a lot of items and abilities to try and make competitive play more interesting -- it just ended up being too much. A lot of things introduced in Gen 5 are still competitive staples today though
@@PinkBunnyCorporation I remember one time a couple years ago, either just before or just after gen 8 was released, my friend called me JUST to rant about how much he hated Toxapex with a burning passion because it's Smogon's Baby
fellow BKC viewers, you might be tempted to once again listen to his soothing voice talking about BW OU for extended periods of time as you fall asleep. That would be a mistake. This video is basically unwatchable without seeing it for yourself. There is an "Am I Gay?" LGBTQ Quiz Ad that really adds to the experience.
As someone who didn't start until gen 6 and likes to observe the discourse around tiering policy at times, I'd been hoping for a video on Aldaron's proposal for a while now, especially after it was referenced multiple times in your videos. Great to see this influential piece of tiering history discussed from your pov.
I'm imagining the world in which they gave Tyranitar something not-broken like Inner Focus as an ability in Gen III. They might not have even bothered to proliferate weather abilities among non-box legendaries and we'd have avoided this debate entirely.
Or if they just... didn't give drizzle and drought to non-legendaries? Sand and hail were never as inherently powerful as sun and rain, so it makes sense that they'd be set by non-legendaries.
It's crazy to think how different gen 5 would have been if politoed was just banned early on. Makes me wonder if T-tar and the other weather setters would have gone as well later.
I think it would create some cool variety. Maybe it would be nice if Tyranitar wasn’t so overcentralizing. I’m not saying Tyranitar is OP, I’m just saying that seeing Tyranitar on every team for 20 years is getting kinda stale to me.
@@GoldGuard Not necessarily *the* meta as a whole, but most definitely the current form of the meta. TTar-less ADV OU would be completely unrecognizable, even if it were to be a balanced and fun metagame
You bringing up the fact that there was a ladder that legalized groudon and kyogre at 80 made me realize thatd be a really cool OM If done correctly until I realized that’s just tier shift
Yeah I remember thinking “why didn’t they just ban drizzle?” and I remember Drought and Chlorophyll on the same team was allowed for the longest time. I hated Gen 5 battles because everything was weather. It was so hard to find battles with people who would agree not to use weather. Gen 4 had the acid rain glitch on cart too. I liked Gen 5 when it wasn’t rain/sand/sun on every battle. Some people even ran Kingdra with swift swim on the off chance the opponent had drizzle. Seeing how all weather abilities got nerfed in Gen 6. Then Gen 7 introduced the abilities for the different field types. Gen 4 and 5 were some wild times for sure.
I think the most controversial decision was to enforce a non-transitive Draught ban in ORAS UU, in order to free Mega Houndoom. Probably the most hideous and unnecessary decision ever.
Can you reword your comment im sorry I kinda don’t understand what it means but I’d like to know. They banned draught to allow houndoom to be used? Wouldn’t drought be good for houndoom?
@@soulsil8059 Mega Houndoom and Draught were beyond overpowered when together in gen7 UU, so one of them had to go. Initially, M-Houndoom was on UUBL. However, since Draught was rather unviable, the UU team decided to give M-Houndoom a shot and to ban Draught. But M-Houndoom was underwhelming in gen6 UU (where Draught was banned) and this ended up being no different in gen7 UU. The problem with the decision is that Draught was allowed in gen7 RU. Due to this, we got a non-transitive ban. Non-transitive bans that aren't species based don't exactly go against the Smogon policy, but should definitely be avoided as much as possible.
As someone who played a ton of gen7ru, the nontransitive part was good if anything -- drought was far from broken there and mostly only used on ninetales as a breaker, who fell in and out of favor and iirc mostly wasn't even RU by usage. The one thing you might be able to attribute to it was alola-wak and darm (who otherwise might've stayed in UU to abuse sun). The former was a good addition overall and the latter was a fun couple days till it became a very obvious ban. Had drought actually turned out to be a problem it would have been banned same as drizzle; would have been dumb for UU to have arbitrarily imposed that on another tier.
Great summary but BKC balking at arguments made centered on expanding Diversity of Strats/Mons seems very Gen 6+ mentality to me- throughout current Gen DPP tiering Diversity was considered a virtue of good competition-geared policy. In fact, the gold standard: Increased Diversity was proof tiering worked for DPP policy leaders. In DPP for every Pokémon we banned 3-5+ became viable, and since all this tiering stuff was very new, and DPP very reasonable to cover all legit/non-degenerate strategies with 6 mons, more Diversity = More Competitive was the ethos. For DPP, Semi-Stall becoming a strategy, or Tentacruel rising to counter nape, or Slowbro lead stuffing Machamp- the “legit” diversity available to DPP players never really constrained team building, it just made competitive battling richer. While a huge uptick in power compared to ADV, it’s still not in DPP’s nature to form insane wild west metas of later gens; which is why DPP OU is still so beloved. When BW gave us team preview the player base was shocked at first but through playing we found GF was totally right to include it because of BW’s sheer ridiculous “legit threat” range. Concern for team matchup and too much threat diversity hampering player’s ability to make competitive 6 man squads was only developing as thought in (much later) Gen 5, and doesn’t properly become tiering guiding philosophy until Gen 6 if I recall correctly. So that’s why to early BW leaders (and community) making tiering choices that would clearly remove whole team arch types it seemed antithetical to tiering first principles of the time. It went against the gold standard indicator of More “Good” Strategies = More Competitive principal of DPP tiering; which was all the community had known. Edit: Hah!! Saw my account in the thread! Totally forgot I even participated in the discussion at the time!! I also forgot that I was clearly on the Pro-Simple Ban train at the time; but there were times post implementation where I found myself glad we saved Politoed.
I'm actually for the Drizzle Swift Swim complex ban, but that said, I hate the arguments that go "If we ban [x], we'll have nothing to stop [y]"...Like, if that's the case, just eventually ban [y] once you have time to tell that's true...
Two bans I was thinking about while watching these videos are the nat dex ban on mega metagross and the nat dex ban (and to a lesser extent probably the OU ban) on dynamax. The latter is more because a lot of the very non-competitively minded arguments came up (Dynamax was gen 8's Big Gimmick after all!), while the former is due to there being a bit of tiering scuffle around what happened. The nat dex dynamax ban is one of my favorite smogon threads of all time to read through due to simply how much nonsense there is
@@kwayke9 definitely it was deserving of a ban, but (basically) what happened was that when voting closed, over 60% of the people who voted voted for it to be banned, but it wasn't 60% of all people eligible to vote. This caused some controversy (eventually it remained unbanned for a while). Ultimately it got quickbanned a bit over a month later.
Y'know, now that I think about it, it's interesting how the only two perma-weathers in gen 3 and 4 OU were the two weathers that don't have corresponding speed-boosting abilities. If you want to use swift swim or chlorophyll, you either have to set the weather manually (thus only having a limited number of turns) or you play in the ubers tier, where the higher power level lets it fit in much better. I feel like the addition of new weather setters and speed-boosting abilities essentially "spoiled" weather for future gens, and I do think the contrast of the two "permanent but subdued" weathers and the "temporary yet potent" ones is an interesting balance.
Gen 5 had such a unique ecosystem with all the pre-international naming conventions and the change between pre and post BW2 being so drastic.. your coverage of it always rocks.
This takes me back because I was following smogon since gen 3 but around the end of dpp and start of bw was I started following the fourms and remember the proposals, ban, some truly insane post about someone wanting to test giratina-o in ou. Was a wild time and makes me wish I started playing competitive before gen 6.
Every time I hear early BW mentioned I just remember how I saw Haxorus and immediately decided it needed a choice band. I feel like I somehow just missed the brief period of time where Deo-A and the like were in BW OU since I didn't play it much and don't remember them at all.
Makes me think about how dynamax would've been handled had it existed back in the day since people were so hesitant to outright ban generation defining mechanics at the time
BKC can you explain what exactly a complex ban is? Because I thought I understood it, but I got into an argument with someone the other day about whether or not banning Dark Void is a complex ban. How is that different than banning Baton Pass, that's not complex, it's just one thing.
Banning Dark Void is not a complex ban because it is just banning the move, not any specific combinations. However, given the limited distribution of the move (Darkrai and in old gens smeargle), it has the same feeling as a complex ban (banning specific parts of a broken pokémon to make them fair).
Yo! Any chance we could someday get a video about why Arena Trap is still legal in DPP UU? As well as why mons like Clef or Nidoqueen aren't broken in their native tier despite being top tier threats in OU.
That would make a good video but I can quickly answer that Nidoqueen is a defensive pokemon without reliable recovery so while it's decent it isn't as good in uu there's no sand and the best pokemon are special attacker like milotic and venusaur Clefable is also a defensive pokemon and there are more fighting types in uu and less passive damage aka sandstorm and spikes Rapid spinning is also easier in uu to get rid of stealth rocks so clefable doesn't benefit as much from magic guard as it does in ou Clefable is really good in uu but not overpowered because the counter play is reasonable Overall these two aren't bad in uu not at all but they prefer slower games with lots of passive damage and uu just doesn't have that
Another reason is because they generally don't wanna mess with lower tiers of older gens. (even when they are slowly coming back from it, resulting the BW lower tiers to be the most messy things ever)
@@zakkschmitt5610 nidoqueen is nu in dpp, but I agree as your point stands about it and can have different Pokémon used as examples as one goes down the tiering to the nu tier that nidoqueen is in as simply put nidoqueen fills a niche set of atributes that is valued in ou and not the other lower tiers and gets outclassed by other pokemon that do it's job better. moreover you using venasaur as an example is really good as it brings out another reason it does less well in lower tiers and that is the fact there are just more poison types to absorb it's toxic spikes as you go down in the tiers so as a result one of it's normally most definingly unique moves in ou becomes less and less cared for. not to mention there are less high base stats and reliable recovery on good walls in lower tiers which results in more damage from moves as they stay at the same strength still which also tilts the value of the passive damage a bit lower as well since you cannot as effectively build full stall teams to use such passive damage well as ou can and as a result this also means offensive teams also value it less since it isn't as needed to break through Pokémon and in a good chunk of defensive Pokémon's cases one of their boons to use them in lower tiers is that they are poison type since better traits on defensive Pokémon like the steel type, recovery, greater bulk and spike immunity gravitate to higher tiers so the abundance of meh and alright poison types in lower tiers in combination of less good reasons to care for tspikes does bog nidoqueen down as without much reason to run them she kinda just becomes a blob of good well rounded stats and coverage. I find cases of mons being better in higher tiers to always be an interesting topic to analyze so sorry for the nerd speak if I come off as a total dweeb who doesn't know when to shut up.
The drizzle/swift swim ban was more than necessary. Rain was easily the most dominate weather in OU with so many good swift swim users. The would never be a opportunity your weather setting would switch in on a swift swimmer outside of the rare Abomasnow. Even then many of the swift swim mons outsped Abomasnow, such as Kingdra and Kabutops, and could easily take it out with their powerful specs draco meteors and banded/sword dance boosted stone edges respectively. Thank goodness the next gen weather was limited to 5-8 turns depending on if the weather mon held it's respective weather stone. Even in SwSh drizzle/swim swift was ridiculous outside of doubles.
As someone who came in to the competitive scene very recently during gen 8, from my POV when gen 5 was current gen, they just released a load of broken stuff into OU and hoped for the best. In that case... 1. Why wasn't this done before in past gens? If the idea of Latios, Darkrai and Deoxys in OU was unpopular during DPP, then why the change of heart at the start of BW? 2. Did they learn from their mistakes when gen 6 was current gen, or did mega evos make the things that were released into OU during BW, such as Latios, Keldeo, Lando-T etc., more balanced? Again, I don't know much about past gens, but looking at the list of mons allowed in OU, there appears to be a much greater power level in BW-SWSH compared to RBY-DPP.
Still don’t know why Keldeo wasn’t banned in BW2. Shit was so broken. Though, it is more easily managed today, because Latios is so much more common now
An argument that I would have made: Sand Veil isn’t broken without sand and yet it is banned so what’s the problem with not going with the complex bans and just go straight for the throat… get rid of Swift Swim, Sand Rush etc… I thought letting Excadrill back in OU with Sand Rush on Rain teams was really a stupid decision
It was mind blowing to me as an avid gen 4 player that permanent weather was not instabanned. The second the 'complex ban' happened i just stopped playing. And the point about blaziken is just hilarious
Just read the thread and, my Arceus, the Oh So Ojective people really are the ones contributing the least to the conversation. The ban Drizzle/Drought crowd has my sympathies. Anyway, are the ad breaks part of the cinematic experience or there is some other reason to not use an ad-block?
I still can’t wait for the discussions around resourceless permanent gems that completely change the users type in gen 9. I’m sure they’ll be fine once every good offensive Pokémon is banned from OU.
Terastallizing is a broken mechanic that has no chance of staying in ou. Being able to switch your type and getting a stab move with it is utterly broken as there’s no way to know. If the tera type was revealed upon switch-in I could see the mechanic having a chance
Would it be inappropriate if I were to refer to epic matches that are relevant to whatever the topic of the video is that happened between absolutely phenomenal players but said matches weren't actually real like "Man I'll never forget that time Finch absolutely destroyed McMegan during SPL 2016 with a BW OU swift swim set"
I prefer the loose, rambling style. Anyone can read a book or wiki article and repeat or restructure it. Rambling is something that only a man who actually remembers it can do, sifting through old memories as they gradually resurface bit by bit. It feels more natural and authentic.
Boiling Water & Wilechase brought me back holy shit. Feel bad for those who didn't play BW1 day 1 meta. Weren't even Darkrai and Manaphy allowed? I remember when they freed Latios and Mr. Chomp.
I'm not sure I'd consider the hidden power bans in gsc a complex ban. I thought the premise was based on availability and the extreme difficulty on getting a good hidden power suicide or raikou in cartridge, rather than them being broken. That said, good video!
The pre-translation in the video makes me wonder what competitive system Japanese players use. Because I somehow doubt that they're going by Smogon rules.
I’d love to know why Aegislash was banned cause I’ve really jumped in gen 8, end of Gen 7 and I never understood how it could be THAT broken. Yeah the stats and effect is crazy but idk how it could do that
@@xtinaxendrix definitely makes it more manageable, I love running it in Gen 8, barely using king shields, I’ll just spam specs band or try automize weakness policy
The higher stats compared to gen 8 aegislash made it obnoxiously hard to KO without a super effective attack. Other ghosts were niche, and common dark types other than bisharp was cucked by kings shield pre nerf. This means you needed a STAB fire or ground type move to KO it. Add to that no toxapex or celesteela in Gen 6, and it really warped the meta and maked/breaked things based on how they dealt with aegislash. Gen 7 added some answers, but z moves counteracted that by letting aegislash get around knock off and fire off insane ghost type nukes.
I started playing competitive formats in gen 5. When gen 6 got going, people were giving me pushback on banning Gale Wings Talonflame and Aegislash. Absolutely maddening.
Admittedly, nowadays Gale Wings Talonflame is considered only sorta good in Gen 6 OU. People have realized that it does not have nearly as many applications as they thought it did.
Neither took very long though - Dynamax was formally suspected very soon after SS launched, and Skymin iirc was one of the first Ubers sent back even before any of the Deoxys forms
Complex bans should absolutely be an option. Don't insult the playerbase's intelligence. Complex bans that clearly do not work (this, Baton Pass) should not.
