The logic with jirachi is counter to smogon's philosophy of bans. Keeping other powerful pokemon in check was never supposed to be a rationale for keeping something broken from a ban. If removing one singular pokemon would cause latias or other mons to instantly become broken, then those mons are also clearly broken and need to go as well. I remember this mantra being repeated very frequently during the aegislash suspect in xy. It'd be like if arceus rock and ho oh were in ou and no one wanted to ban arceus rock because it walls ho oh. If both mons are broken, both go. I get the argument with machamp to an extent but not with jirachi.
They want to eat their cake by virtue signalling against anti-competitive strategies, while still keeping their metagame cake with anti-competitive Jirachi.
Smogon in general is not consistent in their policy, despite repeatedly claiming to strive for it. In gen 5, Excadrill was initially banned because it was impossible to check due to the sandrush speed boost. The reason why they didn't ban sandrush was that the ability was completely fine on other users like Stoutland and Sandslash (at least in OU). But some years later, they unbanned Excadrill and banned sandrush. If this was similar to the recent Froslass controversy involving Snowcloak, this would have been understandable. If Stoutland and Sandslash had turned out to be problematic threats in OU due to their ability, it would make sense to ban it and thus reconsider Excadrill as well. But no, they unbanned Excadrill because the council and leading players thought it would be good for the metagame. So in this case, they were all of a sudden fine banning an ability that is only problematic on one Pokemon, but in other cases, like with speedboost on Blaziken, this option was immediately shut down. I don't even disagree with this outcomes. But I'm getting tired of the repeated insistance of conformity to policy when said policy is and never has been applied consistently. All it needs is some sort of undesirable metagame development, most prominently baton pass teams becoming prominent, and all the previous talk of consistent rulings are thrown out the window.
I'd like to point out that much of this problem (with Jirachi anyway) is caused by the Tiering Council, a body that exists over and supervises all the Generational Councils. The Gen 4 Council sends out regular surveys to the playerbase about what they want banned, and 50% of respondents wanted Jirachi banned/dealt with despite it being a metagame pillar. Those figures are completely absurd, imagine if 50% of Gen 6 players wanted Clefable banned or 50% of Gen 9 players wanted Great Tusk banned. The Gen 4 Council would definitely have done a complex ban by now to deal with specifically Iron Head Jirachi, but the Tiering Council won't allow them to do so because of the general policy on avoiding Complex Bans, which they want to keep as consistent as possible. TLDR; Smogon Bureaucracy is real and there's an over-council preventing the Gen 4 community from fixing the problem in the name of sticking to the rules.
If you do that with jirachi, you can do that with any pokemon. You could allow latios back in ou but ban draco meteor. You could allow darkrai but ban dark void. You could allow groudon but only at lv75. It makes sense only as a convenient mental shortcut but not as a viable long term solution. We already went through complex bans with gen 7 baton pass and we don't need it again.
Everybody on the Tiering Council should be forced to stream themselves playing Gen 4 OU until they make it to 1600 Elo, and they have to start over with a fresh account if they lose to Jirachi cheese. If they can't do it, we need either a complex ban on Jirachi, a complex ban on Serene Grace + Flinching, or just ban Iron Head entirely.
one wise man once said : "I gotta be honest, I'm amazed. Many of you are saying, 'oh, they're suspecting Machamp, what about Jirachi?' You can on- You have to address things one at a time, don't-... It's like if- What if-... What if the world was being... Overrun by vampires and ghouls, and the government said 'Okay, we're gonna go kill the vampires,' and you said 'what about the ghouls?' They're gonna do it next! They're getting to it, okay? The-The Jirachi will be next! There's discussion about it"
It's hilarious. Like at that point it doesn't matter what the council wants or anything, the community itself wants jirachi hit in some way shape or form and it should be as simple as that no matter how "healthy" the pokemon is. If jirachi is holding the tier together something is incredibly wrong if you can't even think about balancing it
I'd be OK with banning Dynamicpunch itself outright. Nobody's complaining about Machamp having 100% accurate Cross Chops and Stone Edges, and nobody is going to be hurt by not being able to run Dynamicpunch on their Breloom/Hariyama/Lucario/whatever. In fact, a case could be made that Dynamicpunch without No Guard is MORE luck-based, since if you run it without that then you're adding TWO coin flips to the game instead of one. We already ban moves that make the game more luck-based - all of the evasion-boosting moves, for instance. Nobody misses Double Team or Minimize, and nobody thinks that it's arbitrary or confusing to do so. While I understand Smogon's philosophy of trying to keep things simple and principled, I think they've gotten too ideological about it and turned it into a dogma that must be uncompromisingly followed even when it's obviously no longer doing any good.
why would we just ban dynamic punch tho if Machamp is bad without it ? "oh yeah, let's keep dracovish but ban fishious rend, the meta absolutely needs a bad pokemon without his good move"
Finally, Jimothy Cool can rest well knowing his crusade against the 4-armed menace was successful. For Jirachi specifically, though, I think the better solution is to just ban iron head. Ban it specifically on Jirachi if you must. I know Smogon is anti against complex bans no matter what, but IMO, Jirachi is perfectly healthy outside of iron head spam and it actually has roles outside of that, unlike Machamp who was only used to be an annoyance and turn games into coin flips.
Yeah but Jirachi would just use zen headbutt instead and people would complain all the same, theonly silver lining is that Tyranitar would become a full counter to jirachi
If they did that, why not unban Machamp but ban Machamp + Dynamic Punch? Why not bab Dynamic Punch? Complex bans lead to way too many questions from casuals who will never play the tier and assume all bans are done by 3 people saying "Yeah it's banned"
@@Blastosie_Offical Personally, if they decided to only ban dynamic punch I'd be fine with that, it still accomplishes the same goal, you've essentially banned Machamp, because nobody is using it for anything but its dynamic punch spam, that's why there was no need to differentiate between banning it, or banning the move/ ability/ whatever. It has a singular thing it does, remove that singular thing it loses any and all relevancy. Jirachi is a massively different case, it has roles that aren't just flinch cheese, and realistically there is no counters. Even Heatran, who is supposed to be the #1 anti Jirachi pokemon is not the perfect counter because it can be para flinched to death. But as stated, if you did a blanket ban on Jirachi, you lose the calm mind sets, you lose the Latias counter, you lose the wish pass support. Complex bans have happened in the past, just look at the baton pass in gen 3 OU, so I see no reason why they cannot be done again.
I'm pretty sure most DPP players would rather just get rid of Iron Head over Jirachi but the council was forced in an ultimatum between do nothing or ban Jirachi cuz "le complex ban is du bad" or something like that
7:45 I gotta be honest that argument is really dumb because Smogon DID ban abilities before. Swift Swim and Sand Rush on weather teams and Arena Trap. It's banned moves like OHKO and Baton Pass, even Sleep in Gen 9. An argument could be made about Machamp being the ONLY Pokémon with No Guard, that removing it strips its identity. Machamp had Guts first and it's a fair option. This isn't like Sand Veil Cacturne / Garchomp. The phrases "Annialape is an Ubers Pokémon" vs. "Annialape's Rage Fist makes it an Uber" are only really that different for people that put Smogon's tiering on a pedestal. It sounds pretentious. MORE Options is always better for a meta.
I mean Machamp on its own isn't really gonna be impactful. Sure it'd be fine without no guard or dynamic punch, but that just creates unnecessary complexity to preserve a pokemon that probably wouldn't end up being seen anyways. There's definitely an argument there and I'd be in support of Machamp getting suspected without one or the other, but it'd be annoying for this to get delayed while people decide which is the problem, dynamic punch or no guard, all in order to save a mediocre pokemon from being mediocre.
@@Blanktester685This, so much this! Every zoomer is cope seethe rent freeing the coomer doomers and sneed feed and seed, they're locked and KEYED and SOVL and /pol/cel bloomer soulless slop kino peak fiction!
More relevant options are always better for a meta. The option for players to use Butterfree in RBY OU is nice, but if it was doing something toxic and the options were between banning Butterfree and doing a complex ban that would make it unusable, I'm voting ban Butterfree every time.
It definitely feels kneejerk-y and overly blanketing but you can see how they got there after approaches to things like baton pass and swagger klefki back in older gens. There were times when it felt like there was a new clause every other week. Idk maybe modern media and community landscapes and like player social involvement is just higher now and it might just be easier to do these days really.
complex ban is when you just ban the move Dynamic Punch because it is only ever used for Confusion degeneracy and nobody tries to hit it without No Guard anyway Nobody tries to hit the even less reliable OHKO moves either, but those have stayed banned forever because a 30% chance to Just Wipe A Pokemon is degenerate. Except when the way it wipes is a status of course, then that's fine
I'm still mad that we couldn't just ban Tera Stellar Terapagos and allow its regular form in standard play. It's a completely unique form that behaves differently from every other Tera but the council wouldn't even consider it.
It’s because complex bans make an already arbitrary rule set more arbitrary, if you banned earthquake on garchomp it probably wouldn’t be banned in gen 5 anymore and it’s the same principle, you don’t ban things on Pokémon until they are balanced, you just ban the Pokémon if it is unbalanced.
There is absolutely no good argument for banning Machamp but keeping Jirachi. If Machamp is banned, Jirachi needs to be banned too. Even if Jirachi is used for more than Iron Head, that doesn't change it's effect on the metagame.
Smogon could've just banned Dynamic Punch and nobody would be complaining, but instead they threw the baby out with the bath water AGAIN, now it's Jirachi's turn to go , stacking Paralysis across the entire enemy team and then using Iron Head for a 60% flinch rate on top of 50% paralysis is just plain dogshit and shouldn't exist, now the entire fucking Pokemon has to pay for its sins And don't give me that bullshit of "Oh but they can't ban moves, that's against the entire point of Smogon's tiering system!" because if they really just hated banning moves, we'd have a metagame consisting of Caterpie, Metapod, Magikarp, Ditto, Unknown, Wobbufett, Wurmple, Silcoon, Cascoon, Wynaut, Beldum, Kricketot, Burmy and Combee because everyone can agree that Swagger is a problematic move and banning it without banning a move would require the ban of literally everything but the Pokemon I just listed because everything that can learn TM moves learns Swagger
idk why folks are acting like banning dynamic punch would make any difference, no-one is using DPP machamp without dynamic punch. And about Jirachi, it's a wild problem with Smogon's counsel, the gen 4 counsel has to answer to them to prove the vitality of their bans. The DPP counsel has been trying to get a jirachi/flinch suspect check for years but the overall, higher up counsel cares more about consistency with their bans.
really despise the ideology of "a pokemon is a sum of its parts" when you then disallow stuff like dry pass. You know, Baton Pass just to pivot? I thought the goal of tiering system was to make sure everything has a tier you can play in to use said mon, but that never really is the case, especially nowadays where even in PU there is a massive difference in usage between, idk, Rhydon and Golem, despite both being similar. People have to move to unofficial tiers like ZU or SU, and even all the way down in SU you'll find stuff like Meganium or Calyrex, who are fully evolved or a mythical respectively, but power-wise they aren't as good as Bellossom or Exeggutor (the latter also being bad in SU). At this point, there really is no justification towards letting some mons see play in an official tier with a move gone. If you really want to be pedantic, you could even argue allowing Zamazenta in OU is already a case of complex ban, since you ban Zamazenta holding Rusted Shield specifically. Tiering policy and system all in all feels stuck in 2010s, maybe early 2010s, and we're in 2025. In just last 5 years we had several cases of exploiting tiering systems (Hitmontop's magical rise, Hisuian Zorua landing in RU) and even cheating to land a ban (Kyurem). I don't know what a better solution to it is, though I do have a few oddball ideas, but there has to be something.
"a pokemon is a sum of its parts" has to be some of the stupidest logic i've heard lol. "pokemon is a sum of it's parts so that means we're justified in making braindead bans" - smogon
In my opinion, if you want the champ banned also ban jirachi. Paralysis flinch is much more imposing, and you have even less of a chance to do anything than confusion. People will say well there are checks like heatran. OK so use sableye or spiritomb
The difference is that Machamp wasn't integral to the structure of Gen 4 OU. Jirachi is. I'm not saying Jirachi shouldn't be banned, but there are much more severe consequences of banning Jirachi, and much more care needs to be taken when doing so.
@spindash64 I don't disagree, but you have to understand that that is a very long and involved process. Will Latias need to be re-banned if Jirachi gets banned? How long will that take? Will Gyarados, for example, need to be looked at after we ban Latias? Does a certain playstyle become way too dominant after we ban Jirachi? These are all questions that need to be asked before banning Jirachi.
@@BorkBigFrighten2 No, we can see how it unfolds AFTER we get rid of the broken pokemon. We don't keep Arceus in OU to check Kyogre, we ban both of them.
If machamp is so op because of the luck factor, then how is jirachi not also banned? This doesn't make much sense to me if Jirachi is gonna just stay legal lol
a wise man once said : "I gotta be honest, I'm amazed. Many of you are saying, 'oh, they're suspecting Machamp, what about Jirachi?' You can on- You have to address things one at a time, don't-... It's like if- What if-... What if the world was being... Overrun by vampires and ghouls, and the government said 'Okay, we're gonna go kill the vampires,' and you said 'what about the ghouls?' They're gonna do it next! They're getting to it, okay? The-The Jirachi will be next! There's discussion about it"
Watch the Fridge podcast between Jimothy Cool and BKC to get the full breakdown. The TL;DR is that the Tiering Council (who manages all gens) is preventing the Gen 4 Council from exploring a complex ban for Jirachi (eg no Iron Head, or no Iron Head + Body Slam), when that likely would have solved this much sooner. The recent surveys that the Gen 4 Council did revealed 70ish % wanted a Machamp ban, and 50% wanted a Jirachi ban. Both are enormous, but to satisfy the actual players of the format, it is only fair to handle the higher voted one first. They plan to suspect test for a Jirachi ban next.
We cant ban individual moves. Please ignore that we banned Shed Tail and Last Respects in gen 9 OU and also any move that raises evasion and also Baton Pass
Gen 9 ou has terrible tiering in general, like hazards. Players complain about them but they'll also say stuff like ceaseless edge is completely fine because "its not bulky enough and too slow"
Obviously Jirachi is the stronger one. It’s the vampire - they dealt with the ghoul first because the vampire invites the noble to house parties sometimes.
I always find it hilarious how Smogon hates RNG but is playing Pokemon. If they were consistent with their philosophy they'd ban TWave, Focus Blast, Stone Edge, and Icicle Spear too but instead they twist themselves into a pretzel in a futile attempt at consistency.
This this THIS. I've been saying this for years. Smogon isn't even Pokémon anymore. The problem stems from people wanting Pokémon to be "more competitive," but that whole ethos shares a very similar issue with the complex bans problem. Any changes Smogon makes to the mechanics of vanilla Pokémon is, in a sense, arbitrary. In the end of the day Pokémon is a prediction based strategy game with heavy RNG elements fundamentally baked into it. Does removing _any_ of the RNG not open the doors to removing _all_ of the RNG? Where do we draw the line? RNG effect everyone equally, I seriously don't see the problem with it. You can hypothetically luck your way into victory, but unless you're genuinely skilled as well, you're never gonna climb the ladder. It honestly just seems like some of the more influential members of the community get overly salty when they lose to people when they "shouldn't have," to the point where they think it's justifiable to alter the very fabric of the game in order to avoid such terrible trauma. These people share way more in common with Lavos than they'd ever admit to themselves...
@jacobesterson The RNG is part of the love, the hate, the frustration, the fun, and the happiness. It's baked in the core game mechanics. Would I get upset for losing a game to a focus blast miss? Absolutely. Would I feel bad for winning because I hit 3 in a row? Absolutely not. It's part of the fabric of the game. Trying to decide what RNG is acceptable is wild.
Banning Machamp instead of Dynamic Punch really feels like they just didn't want to risk either potentially having to update a lower tier should Machamp fall into complete irrelevancy, or having another member to the Electivire and Dusknoir problem Speaking of, why're Electivire and Dusknoir still in "OU by usage" hell? The tiers for these old generations clearly still can be shaken up long after their relevancy has faded, the RBY tiers get a bit of shuffling every half a year give or take, so why're the boys not allowed to just be freed of the shackles confining them to a tier they really don't belong in for no reason other than Charizard Syndrome [and that's not really accurate of a name, because in RBY, even though Zard would probably be "OU by usage" from new folks going into the Gen1 tiers and thinking "Oh, I'll use Charizard in my team! It's its debut generation, it'll be great!", it's still in NU] so they can go to tiers they _do_ belong in
Gen 1 to 3 are viability based rather than usage based unlike gens 4 and onwards, so they can't change Gen 4 tiering like that although I find it kinda dumb because it's a meta over a decade and a half
Smogon needs to genuinely rethink the position on complex bans because we've had several incredibly controversial bans from pokemon that are balanced and competitive except for one thing thats wildly over the top. Like at a certain point its just a common sense hit of a problematic move. The only part of Machamp thats been up for discussion is Dynamic Punch, so that should be the common sense hit. I am sick and tired of this common and reasonable take being thrown out of the window with some strawman argument like dropping Mewtwo to OU with only confusion because no one is actually saying that in good faith. Pokemon who only have one issue should be tested to see if theyre still a problem without that one issue. If Machamp is still an issue with Cross Chop, okay ban it, if not Machamp can either be healthy or fall to wherever it belongs.
Is this an example of that? What healthy things does Machamp do without Dynamic Punch? Does UU want Machamp? If they do, they don't really need OU's permission, they can kind of just take him, this is old gen tiering, tiers are locked in outside of suspect tests and bans.
I think one of the "geniuses" of the "council" of gen 4 got haxed to death and he was so mad that made this whole shitty lobby campaign to ban a pokemon that is not even that good. The fact that jirachi is still there but machamp is not is the whole proof of it. Gen 4 is the metagame I liked the most out of all metagames, and I've never used him and I think it is an average pokemon with a luck based strategy just like jirachi is. If you are removing luck based strategy, please remove jirachi and you know what, also remove blizzard, thunder, fire blast, focus miss, etc etc.... pkmn is a luck based game, even 100% accuracy attacks are based on luck because they don't do consistent damage. This ban is just stupid and proves that smogon "council" are just regular human beings that also do stupid things like everyone else, so anything the say/do should be taken with a pinch of salt.
I think one of the things that annoys me the most is you have to be "good enough" to vote to begin with. The fact they're saying "if you aren't good enough your opinion doesn't matter". If that's the case, just ban things from OST and other tournaments.
While I agree with limiting complex bans, this feels like an exception. Dynamic Punch isn’t Machamp’s signature move; several other mons get it too, and it wouldn’t be all that fun if those mons spammed it either. It really seems like Dynamic Punch is the thing that’s causing all the problems here.
The pro players were actually polled a while ago about what they wanted to be suspected. Jirachi got 50% of people wanting to ban it, while Machamp got 70%. Jirachi will be suspected next. Please do not direct anger at the Gen 4 council. They want a better metagame. They're doing good work
@@handoverthestromboli6715 Yeah it's really sad seeing the DPP council doing their best meanwhile they can't pass any bans without the permission of the overall Smogon council.
"it punishes stall" There, you answered it. Metagames tend to shift from offense to stall when it's less of a ladder and more of a SPL format. The Gen 4 OU we see in tournaments (like all past gen OU) is vastly different from how the ladder went by. The same thing happened with Clefable but the other way around: it was a niche and generally bad pick at the ladder, because games were more offensive, but the stall-y meta we have now feels like home to the pink blob. A similar situation happened with Cloyster in gen 5 OU: gemless Cloyster shouldn't be a threat, but the defensive turn the meta took made it a menace. As for the ban, the move itself should be banned, not the pokemon. Much like Double Team, it's nothing but luck fishing regardless of who uses it or if No Guard is in effect.
But stall also has one of the best matchups into it? Reflect latias, nidoquren, hippo, phys def rotom.. It causes balance and offense to deal with a lot of luck which they cannot afford to lose turns to
That happened because Machamp was more unpopular (more people wanted action on it) and also because banning it has basically no negative consequences as opposed to the problems with banning Jirachi. There's no rule that says that problems have to be dealt with in strict order of how serious they are.
@@CantusTropusThere's also no rule saying that a higher % of players voting yes means you need to do it first either. This argument falls apart with the knowledge that the tiering council has prevented the gen 4 council from even looking into a complex ban for jirachi.
@@ALittleMessiThe pro players were actually polled a while ago about what they wanted to be suspected. Jirachi got 50% of people wanting to ban it, while Machamp got 70%. Knowing this, IT WOULD BE INSANE TO SUSPECT RACHI BEFORE MACHAMP. People would have lost their fucking minds about how awful and undemocratic and literally the soviet union the Gen 4 council is. You are right that the tiering council is lame for blocking complex bans. Absolute loser behavior to be arguing for """""policy"'''"" and against having an actually good ruleset
The fact they banned small fry Machamp and not the OP Jirachi that is even more luck based shows how stupid and self centered the SMOGON council is. They don't want a healthy meta, they want a meta that fits their specific fetishes and ideologies.
I know you probably won’t see this but I’m a big fan of these videos because I’ve never been able to understand things about competitive Pokemon so these videos teach me things I didn’t know
It is because of bans like this that I don't play competitive singles and follow vgc. Smogon literally picks and choses who they want in each tier and are not consistent with their choices. No other game has such bad tier list bans as Smogon.
No, absolutely not. The entire luck argument falls apart completely when you consider jirachi. That mon has been abusing luck for all these years, and even lead to one of the most infamous meltdowns in showdown history. If Machamp is banned because it relies on luck, then jirachi should be banned as well. What does Machamp do that jirachi doesn't? He hits hard. What does jirachi do? Wish support, para spread, flinch spam, has far better typing, and a ton of other utilities.
The key difference here is that if you want a hard hitter, even in the fighting type, then you don't *need* Machamp. This doesn't uproot other fair forms of team support. The utility that Jirachi provides is far more than Iron Head, and there's entire styles of using Jirachi that matter here. Really what should be done is just a ban of Serene Grace + Flinch, that's what people are most upset about.
The pro players were actually polled a while ago about what they wanted to be suspected. Jirachi got 50% of people wanting to ban it, while Machamp got 70%. Jirachi will be suspected, calm down.
TRUE! The gen 4 council actually want to make the metagame fun. but these loser ass political science dropouts in the "policy council" raise their index finger, say, "umm actually" and then shove out up our ass
Personally, while obviously there's no point to "preserving" Machamp without Dynamic Punch, I still think the better option is to ban the move rather than the mon in this case. Machamp ends up stuck being useless either way, either it's useless in Ubers or it's useless in OU because it doesn't have the one tool that makes it good, but if the move got banned rather than the mon, then that prevents people from attempting to cheese a win through the even more luck-based strategy of slapping Dynamic Punch on a worse Pokemon and fishing for the 50% chance to even hit at all as well as the confusion chance. Obviously, Dynamic Punch without No Guard is a bad strategy, but it's still a luck-based strategy that can technically work to cheese out an unfair win. If the purpose of the ban is to remove a luck-based element from the game, then Dynamic Punch itself is the culprit and should just be gone. And before anyone screeches "but that's a complex ban", no, it's not. A complex ban is a COMBINATION, e.g. banning No Guard Dynamic Punch. I think the move itself probably should've been banned as a whole regardless of ability.
Is not complex ban but the smogon admin will ask for more that one broken users to aprove a move ban because is the only problematic users they will only accept a machamp suspects
@@lucasalarcon3230 But the thing is, Machamp isn't a BROKEN user, it's a manageable Pokemon that simply introduces a lot of luck into the game. By that definition, all Dynamic Punch users are "problematic" even if they don't have 100% accuracy on the move, even if they literally never see use, just because the move itself introduces a lot of luck into the game and potentially would allow those Pokemon to beat things they otherwise shouldn't.
@@Milesprowerthegamer machamp needs to hit one flip coin because of no guard, have stab, huge attacks and payback for ghost every other users have to first hit the move and later pray for the RNG confusion plus find a way to punish ghost type. The combination of things that make this annoying only exist on manchamp so smogon will never aprove a dynamic punch ban under this scenario
As someone with no stakes in gen 4 smogon, it's pretty funny to hear that a pokemon got banned because of luck but at the same time it's also getting banned for removing luck.
I’d be okay with a Machamp ban if Jirachi goes too. However, if Dynamicpunch is the sole reason why, then I think we need to take a look at Dynamicpunch first. We’ve already banned Sleep-inducing moves because of their high-impact but RNG-reliant power, and Dynamicpunch is pretty much that. An RNG-fest when not on Champ like Hypnosis, less of one but still an RNG-fest when on Champ, just like Spore.
Smogon regularly shoots down requests based solely on the rationale that the meta is old and should be left alone. I think the complex ban hangups are no longer necessary here.
Even though this topic is complex, I think that my opinion with the majority of people, it should've been either a Dynamic punch Complex Ban, or a reworking on how flinching moves should work. (I mean by removing DynamicPunch/Iron Head, or any other solution). In my personal experience (statistically irrelevant), Machamp has never been a problem, I always considered it too slow and prone to just inviting Jirachi onto the field and probably doing nothing. It's presence created a braindead playstyle of just "click the confusion button" and hope for the best. I can't tell you the number of games that started with a lead Machamp on the other team, I OHKO or 2KO them in the first few turns, and they immediately quit the game, because their set was all based on clicking DynamicPunch and setting Jirachi free. At some points (low ladder) you could literally get by having 5 Pokemon with Lum Berry equipped, and literally win 60% of your games. It was annoying, but I recognize that Machamp was not at fault, not even Para-spam was at fault, hell my team is even centered on using Paralysis through Togekiss to speed control the other team. In any case, this ban seems to be more of a desperation ban, as the reticence of Smogon to do complex bans that would address the problem more directly ends up banning a Pokemon that really didn't need it.
@@tarunyadav3567ok then he becomes irrelevant, the issue is solved, what's the problem? after all, it's not like he was relevant before. better to go with the solution that uproots the part that people don't like compared to overacting, right?
@@tarunyadav3567 I mean, fair enough. If the only thing Machamp was usable for is to click Dynamic Punch, then he was not worthy for OU then, Machamp was a niche pick. Look, let's make a comparison. If I took Iron Head from Jirachi. Would Jirachi be unusable? I.H. it's Jirachi's best move and frankly one of the reason why the meta has been so warped around para flinching, since it opened the gates to that kind of playstyle. Surely it's only the fault of the move that it's OU. But then you see that Jirachi can spread Paralysis and Burn through Body Slam and Fire Punch. Pass wishes around, pivot around certain metagame staples like Latias, Scizor and Fire-less Azelf. Jirachi is more then the sum of its parts. Honestly, Machamp has more than Dynamic Punch, it still hits like a truck and it's bulk is respectable enough to guarantee a comeback in some scenarios. But frankly, it's not OU level.
@@tarunyadav3567 Besides banning Machamp, bans him from EVERY other tier. UU/RU/NU. If Dynamic Punch is taken away, they could allow it to go down to UU (I know the metagames are fixed, but it's a possibility)
Very few people actually played Gen 4 OU, so they just swept the issues under the rug as they thought nobody would notice. Meanwhile Gen 3 OU is still attracting new players because of how flexible it is, keeping its community alive and fresh, which indirectly also causes new players to try out Gen 4 OU. Gen 4 is rigid, its community isn't willing to change and accept that they are wrong. They keep their ancient tiers with barely any updates because they don't want to clean up the mess. New players end up leaving because nothing makes sense anymore, Gen 4 OU and the viability rankings are like day and night.
? The gen 4 community very clearly wants to change things, and the biggest problems pretty much everyone agrees lies with Jirachi and Iron Head specifically The problem is the Tiering Council not letting us even try to address this because of their insistence on keeping everything simple and bare when it comes to bans and retiering
if no guard + dynamic punch is the problem, why ban the whole pokemon and not just the specific combination that's problematic? Same for jirachi, if jirachi has good use outside of an annoying gimmick too and the only thing that's problematic is the specific combination of serene grace + iron head, why discuss banning jirachi entirely and not just the combination that's problematic?
If you ban dynamic+no guard then it is the same as banning machamp. No one will seriously touch machamp without those. With jirachi is makes sense to ban iron head cause it has use outside of iron head. But IMO even then it is like "ban stab moves on dialga to make it ou usable type shit". I think we should just ban jirachi completely. "muh integral to the metagame pokemon" is nonsense. If its broken it should be banned.
The community used Ban Hammer. Machamp tried to avoid the incoming attack but couldn't due to No Guard. Critical Hit!!! It was Super Effective! Machamp has been banned.
Because Smogon's general tolerance for bullshit changed over the course of the years. I feel like people were more tolerant of luck based nonsense back in the day because "eh. It's just how Pokemon is". But nowadays, since competitive pokemon is more and more popular, there's more incentive to make it more...well ... competitive
Nahh they were not tolerant about Machamp. If you brought Machamp in a Tournament you were basically admitting you're worse than your opponent and just want to try cheese a win. Use Machamp and everyone hurled every possible slur at you, the niche subcommunity wasnt gonna like you and that was a good enough deterence to using Machamp (the smogon community has progressed a lot in just a few years lol)
One thing important to understand about strategy games is that variance does not inherently reduce the skill cap of a game. In fact, in most situations, the opposite is true. To take card games as an example, removing mechanics like hidden information and shuffling would vastly reduce the ways in which a player could productively interact with that game and, in most cases, when enough variance is removed from a game, the game becomes solvable. Solving a game state is extremely interesting and satisfying, but playing an already solved game state is much less so unless you were not already aware of the solution. Variance is positive and healthy for a game as a rule and this is a particularly interesting case because whether or not it is healthy variance relies too heavily on the opponent bringing too small of a selection of defensive switches for balance match-ups, while against stall it is almost always healthy variance and against offense it is often no variance at all.
They only do that if move proves to be broken on multiple pokemon see Baton Pass or Last Respects Ban in Scarlet & Violet from both OU and Ubers (tho only Basculegion-M was prominent in Ubers), so Dynamic Punch ban would only be on the table if suddenly his pre-evo Machoke would do the same shit in a metagame relevant capacity (which won't happen because of its shit stats). So its not that they absolutely never do that and just the requirements are really high in comparison to Pokemon bans even from Ubers these days.
This is a case where move ban makes no sense. Machamp is the only user of the move and there is no reason to use machamp outside the move. You are actually stupid and don't know shit
There is precedent for simply banning an ability. Sand Veil and Snow Cloak got banned because of evasion, so I think No Guard should have just been banned, allowing people to still use Guts if they wanted.
Sand Veil and Snow Cloak were fundamentally gamebreaking on multiple pokemon in both DPP & BW (especially Garchomp and Gliscor) is the thing, Machamp is the only fully evolved Pokemon with No Guard and that ability is a non-issue if mon doesn't get shit like Dynamic Punch let alone OHKO moves (thankfully Game Freak hasn't come up with that just yet).
I feel like this is a little overblown. Gen 9 allows Pokemon to literally change their type and counter another pokemon at will on a whim and its "completely competitively healthy", meanwhile the devs gave Machamp an ability that allows it to take advantage of the upside of one move and people want it banned. I understand it's not fun, but enjoyment is subjective. I guarantee if you ask a majority of pokemon players if playing Stall is fun they'd probably say no, but we don't ban PP stalling because it's not fun. Machamp isn't putting stress on teambuilding, it isn't an overbearing force, and it's a perfectly normal pokemon outside of one status condition a move applies. Gen 4 players just got bored of playing the same meta
Pretty hypocritical if you ask me. The comparison at the end doesnt really work either, because dynamic punch isnt machamps signature move. Its a shame because you could so easily replace it with CC and go for a gut flame orb set or anything else really. Machamp is versatile and this way of banning just kills creativity. And I said its hypocritical because in the past specific stuff was banned already. Ninjask was banned from using BP, Blaziken was banned from using Speedboost as an ability etc.
pokemon has checks and balances for every "luck" based strategy built into the game already. ie confusion - own tempo, lum berry, etc. the problem is people complain they cant build a team to cover all of them so they whine and decide just to ban those strategies instead. Now we get a boring meta game where only a few strategies are present and its still luck-based anyway at the end of the day
“We don’t ban individual moves because every Pokémon is the sum of its parts” Meanwhile Minimize, Double Team, Fissure, Horn Drill, Sheer Cold, and Guillotine:
They do ban individual moves from being used by ALL pokemon, that’s not considered a complex ban. What is considered a complex ban by Smogon is banning a move on a specific pokemon but not on others. Hope that clears it up a bit.
@ Then ban Dynamic punch. If the issue is “this move introduces an unfun level of variance” then dynamic punch falls into the exact same category as minimize, swagger, and OHKOs. We don’t ban Muk because it can learn minimize. Sending Machamp to Ubers is a foolish solution that’s inconsistent with the tiering they have now.
@@ellieporter3270 Hey dude that’s what I voted for(Dynamic Punch ban) maybe you should’ve gotten your reqs if it seriously bothered you that much. Would’ve helped
@@i_like_chomp6382 My ass was not ever hitting those reqs lmao. I was under the impression that Dpunch wasn’t ever on the table though because of Smogon higher ups, just Machamp as a whole, which is what I’m criticizing.
@ No why wouldn’t it be on the table, literally everyone was saying that on the forums. It just so happens that some players thought there could be a precedent set if Machamp was banned as a whole in order to ban Jirachi eventually.
My philosophy is we should avoid as many bans as possible to implement Game Freak's vision (i.e. they gave Machamp, Jirachi, Dugtrio, etc. these tools some find "broken" or "lucky" or whatever for a reason. Let them in). Now obviously there are cases where the pokemon in general is too powerful - typically legendaries are banished to Uber on behalf of their gargantuan BST compared to the mons available in OU. Something Freezai said about "opting in" made a connection in my head. Yes, competitive Pokemon is, by nature, filled with RNG on almost every turn. If you don't want to deal with that, then go play another competitive esport or stick to a casual playthrough of pokemon. Likewise, there are so many metagame options nowadays, so if you don't want to opt-in to what you perceive to be a "lucky" or "unfun" (that whole viewpoint of a metagame should be fun doesn't make much sense to me but i'll skip over it), there are other metagames to go play. You can play Gen 4 UU or go play something like Gen 7 OU or whatever else like Follow the Leader. Also, again, there are always RNG factors at play. You might have to hit/dodge a 70% focus blast to win the game, just like you might need to dodge a confusion hit to win against Machamp. Frustrating? Sure, but that's what we all implicitly agreed to when we decided to search for a competitive pokemon match. Finally, I do agree there are ways to manage Machamp as Freezai laid out. And his point about people use the good strategies to win is a favor against banning imo. If Machamp was truly this gargantuan threat, it would be higher than B in viability; it would have usage higher than 13%. But instead it was mostly a matchup/luck fish poke. As I said above, is it frustrating to get sucked into the vortex and lose to that? Yeah, but things like that happen all the time in pokemon. Use your own paraspam if it's so good - moves like Thunder Wave are good on current staples anyways. Maybe bulk/fat playstyles just aren't meant to be good in Gen 4 OU; not every playstyle is good in every metagame. Idk this is disappointing to hear about from someone who loved playing Gen 4 a few years ago. Feels like a slippery slope and Jirachi should be banned too if they want to be consistent
@@seanscott2677 I don't understand this idea of the purity of the base game. The point of smogon banning things is that they provide a more competitive, balanced, and fun metagame. And then there are tons of different tiers so you can play with the pokémon you like the most and whichever flavor of game balance you enjoy with. Why are you against removing toxic rng mechanics or broken stuff like dug, but then fine with legendaries being banned because of BST. By what basis is BST a worthy metric for removal but not having an overpowered ability or move or some uncompetitive rng strat isn't? Do you also want freeze clause lifted and ohko/evasion moves to make a comeback then? This is all just making the game less diverse and less competitive in exchange for some sort of purity to the base game.
Banning the move Dynamic Punch is distinctly different from banning Annhilape's Rage Fist in my opinion. Annhilape with Rage Fist is banworthy because it is too powerful and overwhelming of a threat for the OU metagame, whereas Machamp with Dynamic Punch is banworthy because it is not fun to play against. Machamp is not too powerful for OU play with Dynamic Punch such that it needs to be moved to ubers, it is only too unfun, so removing the element that makes the game unfun makes much more sense to me. And it's noteworthy that Dynamic Punch makes the game unfun when it's on _any_ Pokemon as well. It's just that Machamp is the only relevant Pokemon that uses it.
banning D punch is the better move, a machamp ban makes him useless garateed, banning D punch gets rid of the unfun move for any other potential abusers later as well as solving the macahmp d punch issue.
@@handoverthestromboli6715 banning a move across the board for everyone is not a complex ban. a complex ban would be banning pokemon with no guard using no guard but allowing it for non-noguard pokemon.
Listening to this analysis makes me wonder how much RNG is too much RNG, competitively speaking. Will we maybe see a day where paralysis is also banned in a competitive format because of the chance of being unable to move combined with other luck elements like flinching? I'm mostly curious to know how far competitive players are willing to go. Will it be like in the Smash Brothers community, where even a slight slope on a stage can be seen as too much of an advantage to keep it in the competitive space?
Personally I’ve always found machamp to be a manageable threat that doesn’t appear too often and don’t think it should have been banned but I can see why some want it gone
Also to people who don't know old gen mechanics, paralyze back in the day cut your speed down to a QUARTER, not just in half. So Champ with ANY para spam would outspeed you 100% of the time
I have a hot take. Its probably going to be unpopular. But the fact that Smogon would rather ban hammer Machamp over curbing stall among other nonsense is why I stopped playing competitive. Stall imo. Is just as unhealthy for the game as dynamic punch Machamp, especially since nobody wants to spend an eternity staring at a screen.
Tbh stall wasn't really the most vulnerable to Machamp and the teamcomps enabling it since they usually could stall out Dynamic Punch PP without Machamp doing too much unrepairable damage, but more balance/bulky offense teamcomps which hated it way more when their often less bulky Latias or Zapdos or something else got confused to death.
if No Guard Dynamic Punch is such a problem, just ban No Guard. iirc, the Machop line are the only pokemon in the Gen4 games that get it, and it's not like they don't have another ability in Guts. seriously, if they didn't want to make a complex ban, just banning No Guard would work fine. Edit: Just checked. the Machop Line are indeed the only pokemon in the Gen4 games that have No Guard
They seem to be against the idea of banning an ability when only one single Pokémon (line) has it, even if that lone Mon is problematic with it. This seems really arbitrary again, but for no good _objective_ reason at that. :|
Using the usage stats as the main and almost singular metric for balancing the Pokemon formats has always been wild to me. I firmly believe that all people don't just play to win but a large majority also want to have fun. For the more extreme stragagies like hard stall, hyper offensive, para flinch, etc. Some people really enjoy them and will try to make them work even when they aren't as good from a win percentage perspective. This will somewhat over represent them compared to where they might be objectively based on win percentage (eg. Wolfeyvgc using perish trap) Conversely when these stragagies are at a top level they will be somewhat under represented because some percentage of people don't like to use hard stall or other 'gimmick' strategies that are all or nothing. In this video it is partially explained that machamp maybe under represented due to the fact that many people don't like to rely on the rng heavy confusion strategy. You see this in games like melee where some people don't like to play jigglypuff and fox is overrepresented, in games like magic the gathering where some people have strong preferences for controlling decks or aggressive decks, or in starcraft where some people only play Protos or only Zerg. I'm glad it's seems to be working well for Pokemon but it is endlessly surprising to me
I dont see how banning moves on pokemon is different from banning item combinations No one complains about the lati twins in OU not being able to hold the soul dew prior to there nerf. I dont see why jirachi or machamp not being able to use iron head or dynamic punch isnt the same case. BKC brought up how the dpp council wanted iron head as a whole banned but the over all OU council for past gens didnt let that happen. But I feel like thats a nice middle ground.
While it's very funny and interesting to see Machamp do something besides get ohko'd by psychic. It doesn't seem very fun to play against. And to quote a legendary figure in gaming "If it's not fun, why bother?"
DUDE when this game came out I used No-Guard Machamp in the Battle Hall, that one part of the battle frontier where you only brought one pokemon. I've known it was busted for 19 years lmfaooooo
why does how a pokemon is tiered affect a pokemon like machamp who's issue isn't his strength but his RNG? the video makes it sound like the hit was NOT for strength reasons
I played Gen 4 on cart back in the day and I hated playing against Machamp so much that I commissioned someone to breed me a 5 IV Slowbro specifically to counter it.
I personally love the "ban pokemon not sum of it's parts" thing There is ONE exception to this I think should have been made that wasn't. Doubles has the terror that is dondozogiri. In smogon tatsugiri is banned why? Because dondozogiri is too strong. They could have banned commander instead and that stops the duo from being used. Banning tatsugiri does make both remarkably different in doubles, banning commander would make them both remarkably different and not the sum of all their parts, but it would allow tatsu to be used in lower doubles tiers. Where I think it should belong if you don't want dozogiri Personally I feel like dozo tatsu and dozogiri are 3 almost entirely different Pokemon. So banning one to ban another feels wrong. It's like if we banned hoopa base cause hoppa unbound was too op
even as an outsider, I'm firmly in the ban dynamic punch and iron head jirachi camp. Problem is it seems like the people at the top (not all ppl at smogon of course) have huge egos because they run a pokemon battle sim. It's pretty sad actually
The reason is that confusion is very annoying when paired with an teammate that spreads paralysis such as Thunder Wave or Body Slam. And this is how it looks like when getting hit by Dynamic Punch: 1st turn confusion: *gets hit itself in confusion* PBR announcer: "Oh no, It attacked itself!" 2nd turn confusion *gets hit again because of RNG* PBR announcer: "It attacked itself again, That has got to hurt!"
It's because the community is getting smaller and smaller so they can pick apart OU into whatever they want. A real examination of what is wrong would ban Jirachi too, but the people just like Jirachi more and don't want to remove a load-bearing pokemon and deal with the meta totally changing.
Its not really about playerbase getting smaller (still more than in the Pokemon Online days when BW was current gen) and more that Jirachis case is so divided between those fearing the metagame ramifications and those wanting to get rid of its flinch and status shenanigans that its hard to justify the suspect when the chance is high that it barely misses 50 or 60% banvotes and time is essentially wasted. Machamp wasn't that, it leaving barely changes much except making dedicated paraspam teams a bit less common (and even then you can build viable teams around that shit with abusers other than Machamp) and so outside of those who would rather see more ability bans no one really misses Machamp.
The logic with jirachi is counter to smogon's philosophy of bans. Keeping other powerful pokemon in check was never supposed to be a rationale for keeping something broken from a ban. If removing one singular pokemon would cause latias or other mons to instantly become broken, then those mons are also clearly broken and need to go as well. I remember this mantra being repeated very frequently during the aegislash suspect in xy. It'd be like if arceus rock and ho oh were in ou and no one wanted to ban arceus rock because it walls ho oh. If both mons are broken, both go. I get the argument with machamp to an extent but not with jirachi.
Exactly
You nailed it. They need to ban Jirachi for making the metagame unplayable, and if that makes Latias broken, then they need to ban Latias too.
@@hikerclarence7092 for older gens is all up to the people that still play the tier they aren't held to the same standard of current OU
They want to eat their cake by virtue signalling against anti-competitive strategies, while still keeping their metagame cake with anti-competitive Jirachi.
Smogon in general is not consistent in their policy, despite repeatedly claiming to strive for it. In gen 5, Excadrill was initially banned because it was impossible to check due to the sandrush speed boost. The reason why they didn't ban sandrush was that the ability was completely fine on other users like Stoutland and Sandslash (at least in OU). But some years later, they unbanned Excadrill and banned sandrush. If this was similar to the recent Froslass controversy involving Snowcloak, this would have been understandable. If Stoutland and Sandslash had turned out to be problematic threats in OU due to their ability, it would make sense to ban it and thus reconsider Excadrill as well. But no, they unbanned Excadrill because the council and leading players thought it would be good for the metagame. So in this case, they were all of a sudden fine banning an ability that is only problematic on one Pokemon, but in other cases, like with speedboost on Blaziken, this option was immediately shut down.
I don't even disagree with this outcomes. But I'm getting tired of the repeated insistance of conformity to policy when said policy is and never has been applied consistently. All it needs is some sort of undesirable metagame development, most prominently baton pass teams becoming prominent, and all the previous talk of consistent rulings are thrown out the window.
I'd like to point out that much of this problem (with Jirachi anyway) is caused by the Tiering Council, a body that exists over and supervises all the Generational Councils. The Gen 4 Council sends out regular surveys to the playerbase about what they want banned, and 50% of respondents wanted Jirachi banned/dealt with despite it being a metagame pillar. Those figures are completely absurd, imagine if 50% of Gen 6 players wanted Clefable banned or 50% of Gen 9 players wanted Great Tusk banned. The Gen 4 Council would definitely have done a complex ban by now to deal with specifically Iron Head Jirachi, but the Tiering Council won't allow them to do so because of the general policy on avoiding Complex Bans, which they want to keep as consistent as possible.
TLDR; Smogon Bureaucracy is real and there's an over-council preventing the Gen 4 community from fixing the problem in the name of sticking to the rules.
If you do that with jirachi, you can do that with any pokemon. You could allow latios back in ou but ban draco meteor. You could allow darkrai but ban dark void. You could allow groudon but only at lv75. It makes sense only as a convenient mental shortcut but not as a viable long term solution. We already went through complex bans with gen 7 baton pass and we don't need it again.
Everybody on the Tiering Council should be forced to stream themselves playing Gen 4 OU until they make it to 1600 Elo, and they have to start over with a fresh account if they lose to Jirachi cheese. If they can't do it, we need either a complex ban on Jirachi, a complex ban on Serene Grace + Flinching, or just ban Iron Head entirely.
one wise man once said :
"I gotta be honest, I'm amazed. Many of you are saying, 'oh, they're suspecting Machamp, what about Jirachi?' You can on- You have to address things one at a time, don't-... It's like if- What if-... What if the world was being... Overrun by vampires and ghouls, and the government said 'Okay, we're gonna go kill the vampires,' and you said 'what about the ghouls?'
They're gonna do it next! They're getting to it, okay? The-The Jirachi will be next! There's discussion about it"
More fuel for my dislike of the inconsistency and unnecessary to harmful rigidity of smogon tiering policy? Let's go!!!
It's hilarious. Like at that point it doesn't matter what the council wants or anything, the community itself wants jirachi hit in some way shape or form and it should be as simple as that no matter how "healthy" the pokemon is. If jirachi is holding the tier together something is incredibly wrong if you can't even think about balancing it
I'd be OK with banning Dynamicpunch itself outright. Nobody's complaining about Machamp having 100% accurate Cross Chops and Stone Edges, and nobody is going to be hurt by not being able to run Dynamicpunch on their Breloom/Hariyama/Lucario/whatever. In fact, a case could be made that Dynamicpunch without No Guard is MORE luck-based, since if you run it without that then you're adding TWO coin flips to the game instead of one. We already ban moves that make the game more luck-based - all of the evasion-boosting moves, for instance. Nobody misses Double Team or Minimize, and nobody thinks that it's arbitrary or confusing to do so. While I understand Smogon's philosophy of trying to keep things simple and principled, I think they've gotten too ideological about it and turned it into a dogma that must be uncompromisingly followed even when it's obviously no longer doing any good.
why would we just ban dynamic punch tho if Machamp is bad without it ?
"oh yeah, let's keep dracovish but ban fishious rend, the meta absolutely needs a bad pokemon without his good move"
@@emdal4055bc d punch is just as much of a rng based move as double team and minimize
If you ban the moove then Machamp will disappear, If you ban Machamp than it will disappear
Same outcome, so it's easier to choose the simplest one.
Confusion as a whole should be banned under evasion clause but that's just me
Hurricane > Bleakwindstorm, and that's bad design
@emdal405
bc machamp has other roles that aren’t luck based and OP?? bc then you can still use machamp if you wanted too?
Smogon used Ban Hammer
But it hit itself in confusion for 15 years
Smogon got paraflinched by Jirachi 15 years in a row as it goes
@InsertFunnyThingHereParaflinched by Jirachi 15 years in a row is not a sentence I was expecting but DEFINITELY is one I can relate to 😂
Man, it's crazy how they got it wrong for 15 years in a row and people only just noticed in the last few years!
Wow this meta is old enough to vote. I feel old asf
And the first thing it voted for is to ban Machamp smh
Bro it's older than me 💀💀💀
Finally, Jimothy Cool can rest well knowing his crusade against the 4-armed menace was successful.
For Jirachi specifically, though, I think the better solution is to just ban iron head. Ban it specifically on Jirachi if you must. I know Smogon is anti against complex bans no matter what, but IMO, Jirachi is perfectly healthy outside of iron head spam and it actually has roles outside of that, unlike Machamp who was only used to be an annoyance and turn games into coin flips.
Yeah but Jirachi would just use zen headbutt instead and people would complain all the same, theonly silver lining is that Tyranitar would become a full counter to jirachi
If they did that, why not unban Machamp but ban Machamp + Dynamic Punch? Why not bab Dynamic Punch? Complex bans lead to way too many questions from casuals who will never play the tier and assume all bans are done by 3 people saying "Yeah it's banned"
@@Delightedwaves Zen Headbutt is way less of a problem because of the 90 accuracy, plus the fact that Dark types stonewall it.
@@Blastosie_Offical Personally, if they decided to only ban dynamic punch I'd be fine with that, it still accomplishes the same goal, you've essentially banned Machamp, because nobody is using it for anything but its dynamic punch spam, that's why there was no need to differentiate between banning it, or banning the move/ ability/ whatever. It has a singular thing it does, remove that singular thing it loses any and all relevancy.
Jirachi is a massively different case, it has roles that aren't just flinch cheese, and realistically there is no counters. Even Heatran, who is supposed to be the #1 anti Jirachi pokemon is not the perfect counter because it can be para flinched to death. But as stated, if you did a blanket ban on Jirachi, you lose the calm mind sets, you lose the Latias counter, you lose the wish pass support. Complex bans have happened in the past, just look at the baton pass in gen 3 OU, so I see no reason why they cannot be done again.
I'm pretty sure most DPP players would rather just get rid of Iron Head over Jirachi but the council was forced in an ultimatum between do nothing or ban Jirachi cuz "le complex ban is du bad" or something like that
7:45 I gotta be honest that argument is really dumb because Smogon DID ban abilities before. Swift Swim and Sand Rush on weather teams and Arena Trap. It's banned moves like OHKO and Baton Pass, even Sleep in Gen 9. An argument could be made about Machamp being the ONLY Pokémon with No Guard, that removing it strips its identity. Machamp had Guts first and it's a fair option. This isn't like Sand Veil Cacturne / Garchomp.
The phrases "Annialape is an Ubers Pokémon" vs. "Annialape's Rage Fist makes it an Uber" are only really that different for people that put Smogon's tiering on a pedestal. It sounds pretentious.
MORE Options is always better for a meta.
your opinions are as poorly done as your animations.
Pot meet kettle, resort to insults to cope with the fact you lack a counter argument
I mean Machamp on its own isn't really gonna be impactful. Sure it'd be fine without no guard or dynamic punch, but that just creates unnecessary complexity to preserve a pokemon that probably wouldn't end up being seen anyways. There's definitely an argument there and I'd be in support of Machamp getting suspected without one or the other, but it'd be annoying for this to get delayed while people decide which is the problem, dynamic punch or no guard, all in order to save a mediocre pokemon from being mediocre.
@@Blanktester685This, so much this! Every zoomer is cope seethe rent freeing the coomer doomers and sneed feed and seed, they're locked and KEYED and SOVL and /pol/cel bloomer soulless slop kino peak fiction!
More relevant options are always better for a meta. The option for players to use Butterfree in RBY OU is nice, but if it was doing something toxic and the options were between banning Butterfree and doing a complex ban that would make it unusable, I'm voting ban Butterfree every time.
Smogon's hate boner to "complex bans" has always irritated me.
I think gen 5 traumatized them
It definitely feels kneejerk-y and overly blanketing but you can see how they got there after approaches to things like baton pass and swagger klefki back in older gens.
There were times when it felt like there was a new clause every other week. Idk maybe modern media and community landscapes and like player social involvement is just higher now and it might just be easier to do these days really.
complex ban is when you just ban the move Dynamic Punch because it is only ever used for Confusion degeneracy and nobody tries to hit it without No Guard anyway
Nobody tries to hit the even less reliable OHKO moves either, but those have stayed banned forever because a 30% chance to Just Wipe A Pokemon is degenerate. Except when the way it wipes is a status of course, then that's fine
I'm still mad that we couldn't just ban Tera Stellar Terapagos and allow its regular form in standard play. It's a completely unique form that behaves differently from every other Tera but the council wouldn't even consider it.
It’s because complex bans make an already arbitrary rule set more arbitrary, if you banned earthquake on garchomp it probably wouldn’t be banned in gen 5 anymore and it’s the same principle, you don’t ban things on Pokémon until they are balanced, you just ban the Pokémon if it is unbalanced.
There is absolutely no good argument for banning Machamp but keeping Jirachi. If Machamp is banned, Jirachi needs to be banned too. Even if Jirachi is used for more than Iron Head, that doesn't change it's effect on the metagame.
See Jirachi is a situation where I could see banning Iron Head specifically.
Though I don't play the meta so it isn't really my place to decide.
they banned machamp because a youtube baby was crying
@@lucaslennan3356 Maybe that would be a good option
They should have banned dynamic punch then.
@@sampletext9426are you talking abt jimothy cool lmao? He's definitely not why machamp was banned
Smogon could've just banned Dynamic Punch and nobody would be complaining, but instead they threw the baby out with the bath water AGAIN, now it's Jirachi's turn to go , stacking Paralysis across the entire enemy team and then using Iron Head for a 60% flinch rate on top of 50% paralysis is just plain dogshit and shouldn't exist, now the entire fucking Pokemon has to pay for its sins
And don't give me that bullshit of "Oh but they can't ban moves, that's against the entire point of Smogon's tiering system!" because if they really just hated banning moves, we'd have a metagame consisting of Caterpie, Metapod, Magikarp, Ditto, Unknown, Wobbufett, Wurmple, Silcoon, Cascoon, Wynaut, Beldum, Kricketot, Burmy and Combee because everyone can agree that Swagger is a problematic move and banning it without banning a move would require the ban of literally everything but the Pokemon I just listed because everything that can learn TM moves learns Swagger
Also OHKO moves have been banned forever and they're just dynamic punch accelerant
idk why folks are acting like banning dynamic punch would make any difference, no-one is using DPP machamp without dynamic punch. And about Jirachi, it's a wild problem with Smogon's counsel, the gen 4 counsel has to answer to them to prove the vitality of their bans. The DPP counsel has been trying to get a jirachi/flinch suspect check for years but the overall, higher up counsel cares more about consistency with their bans.
This is the cringest ban ever (I don't know anything about G4 OU)
The only difference between you and most other Pokemon fans is your honesty, based.
The ban is very cringe and I am a gen4 expert.
Yeah, I've been playing Pokemon since I was 6, and today at 28 years old I can say that this was the most cringe ban I've ever seen.
We can tell you don't know anything about it.
Because it's such a braindead decision any rando who's never played the format can recognize that at first glance.
really despise the ideology of "a pokemon is a sum of its parts" when you then disallow stuff like dry pass. You know, Baton Pass just to pivot?
I thought the goal of tiering system was to make sure everything has a tier you can play in to use said mon, but that never really is the case, especially nowadays where even in PU there is a massive difference in usage between, idk, Rhydon and Golem, despite both being similar. People have to move to unofficial tiers like ZU or SU, and even all the way down in SU you'll find stuff like Meganium or Calyrex, who are fully evolved or a mythical respectively, but power-wise they aren't as good as Bellossom or Exeggutor (the latter also being bad in SU). At this point, there really is no justification towards letting some mons see play in an official tier with a move gone.
If you really want to be pedantic, you could even argue allowing Zamazenta in OU is already a case of complex ban, since you ban Zamazenta holding Rusted Shield specifically.
Tiering policy and system all in all feels stuck in 2010s, maybe early 2010s, and we're in 2025. In just last 5 years we had several cases of exploiting tiering systems (Hitmontop's magical rise, Hisuian Zorua landing in RU) and even cheating to land a ban (Kyurem). I don't know what a better solution to it is, though I do have a few oddball ideas, but there has to be something.
"a pokemon is a sum of its parts" has to be some of the stupidest logic i've heard lol. "pokemon is a sum of it's parts so that means we're justified in making braindead bans" - smogon
In my opinion, if you want the champ banned also ban jirachi. Paralysis flinch is much more imposing, and you have even less of a chance to do anything than confusion. People will say well there are checks like heatran. OK so use sableye or spiritomb
The difference is that Machamp wasn't integral to the structure of Gen 4 OU. Jirachi is.
I'm not saying Jirachi shouldn't be banned, but there are much more severe consequences of banning Jirachi, and much more care needs to be taken when doing so.
Payback hits for 100 bp on switch in on gen IV
@@BorkBigFrighten2
Then get rid of the current structure: a structure based around an unfun pokemon is itself unfun
@spindash64 I don't disagree, but you have to understand that that is a very long and involved process.
Will Latias need to be re-banned if Jirachi gets banned? How long will that take? Will Gyarados, for example, need to be looked at after we ban Latias? Does a certain playstyle become way too dominant after we ban Jirachi? These are all questions that need to be asked before banning Jirachi.
@@BorkBigFrighten2
No, we can see how it unfolds AFTER we get rid of the broken pokemon. We don't keep Arceus in OU to check Kyogre, we ban both of them.
If machamp is so op because of the luck factor, then how is jirachi not also banned? This doesn't make much sense to me if Jirachi is gonna just stay legal lol
a wise man once said :
"I gotta be honest, I'm amazed. Many of you are saying, 'oh, they're suspecting Machamp, what about Jirachi?' You can on- You have to address things one at a time, don't-... It's like if- What if-... What if the world was being... Overrun by vampires and ghouls, and the government said 'Okay, we're gonna go kill the vampires,' and you said 'what about the ghouls?'
They're gonna do it next! They're getting to it, okay? The-The Jirachi will be next! There's discussion about it"
@@emdal4055The Legend.
Machamp is manageable and didn't ocuppy a key roll in the meta, you didn't watch the video
Watch the Fridge podcast between Jimothy Cool and BKC to get the full breakdown.
The TL;DR is that the Tiering Council (who manages all gens) is preventing the Gen 4 Council from exploring a complex ban for Jirachi (eg no Iron Head, or no Iron Head + Body Slam), when that likely would have solved this much sooner. The recent surveys that the Gen 4 Council did revealed 70ish % wanted a Machamp ban, and 50% wanted a Jirachi ban. Both are enormous, but to satisfy the actual players of the format, it is only fair to handle the higher voted one first. They plan to suspect test for a Jirachi ban next.
@AlexandroGarcia6492
Okay mister giant brain
If it was manageable, why did 70% of the competitive gen 4 players wanted Machamp banned ?
Kellen: "Say hello to one of the most obnoxious Pokemon of all time"
Kellen: "He can't miss DYNAMIC PUNCH"
We cant ban individual moves. Please ignore that we banned Shed Tail and Last Respects in gen 9 OU and also any move that raises evasion and also Baton Pass
Gen 9 ou has terrible tiering in general, like hazards. Players complain about them but they'll also say stuff like ceaseless edge is completely fine because "its not bulky enough and too slow"
Folks let's have a moment of respect for Anthony Terrible, slayed by Gary Xavier Edward on his quest to participate on the voting.
The vampires have been dealt with! Now's the time for the ghouls!
Obviously Jirachi is the stronger one. It’s the vampire - they dealt with the ghoul first because the vampire invites the noble to house parties sometimes.
@@mogalixir the vampire are dealt with first then the ghouls. As was said.
An incredible quote of all time. Ty Mr. Cool
I always find it hilarious how Smogon hates RNG but is playing Pokemon. If they were consistent with their philosophy they'd ban TWave, Focus Blast, Stone Edge, and Icicle Spear too but instead they twist themselves into a pretzel in a futile attempt at consistency.
yeah it's moronic. pokemon is a game of RNG, guessing, and RPS. they should just play chess as white every time if they want a no-rng strategy game
This this THIS. I've been saying this for years. Smogon isn't even Pokémon anymore.
The problem stems from people wanting Pokémon to be "more competitive," but that whole ethos shares a very similar issue with the complex bans problem. Any changes Smogon makes to the mechanics of vanilla Pokémon is, in a sense, arbitrary. In the end of the day Pokémon is a prediction based strategy game with heavy RNG elements fundamentally baked into it. Does removing _any_ of the RNG not open the doors to removing _all_ of the RNG? Where do we draw the line? RNG effect everyone equally, I seriously don't see the problem with it. You can hypothetically luck your way into victory, but unless you're genuinely skilled as well, you're never gonna climb the ladder.
It honestly just seems like some of the more influential members of the community get overly salty when they lose to people when they "shouldn't have," to the point where they think it's justifiable to alter the very fabric of the game in order to avoid such terrible trauma. These people share way more in common with Lavos than they'd ever admit to themselves...
@jacobesterson
The RNG is part of the love, the hate, the frustration, the fun, and the happiness. It's baked in the core game mechanics.
Would I get upset for losing a game to a focus blast miss? Absolutely. Would I feel bad for winning because I hit 3 in a row? Absolutely not.
It's part of the fabric of the game. Trying to decide what RNG is acceptable is wild.
Insert "Smogon hates fun" meme.
Literally the most pro-fun change in any metagame every just dropped and mfers still complaining
Banning Machamp instead of Dynamic Punch really feels like they just didn't want to risk either potentially having to update a lower tier should Machamp fall into complete irrelevancy, or having another member to the Electivire and Dusknoir problem
Speaking of, why're Electivire and Dusknoir still in "OU by usage" hell?
The tiers for these old generations clearly still can be shaken up long after their relevancy has faded, the RBY tiers get a bit of shuffling every half a year give or take, so why're the boys not allowed to just be freed of the shackles confining them to a tier they really don't belong in for no reason other than Charizard Syndrome [and that's not really accurate of a name, because in RBY, even though Zard would probably be "OU by usage" from new folks going into the Gen1 tiers and thinking "Oh, I'll use Charizard in my team! It's its debut generation, it'll be great!", it's still in NU] so they can go to tiers they _do_ belong in
Gen 1 to 3 are viability based rather than usage based unlike gens 4 and onwards, so they can't change Gen 4 tiering like that although I find it kinda dumb because it's a meta over a decade and a half
Electivire and dusknoir are in hell because UU doesn't want them
Smogon needs to genuinely rethink the position on complex bans because we've had several incredibly controversial bans from pokemon that are balanced and competitive except for one thing thats wildly over the top. Like at a certain point its just a common sense hit of a problematic move. The only part of Machamp thats been up for discussion is Dynamic Punch, so that should be the common sense hit. I am sick and tired of this common and reasonable take being thrown out of the window with some strawman argument like dropping Mewtwo to OU with only confusion because no one is actually saying that in good faith.
Pokemon who only have one issue should be tested to see if theyre still a problem without that one issue. If Machamp is still an issue with Cross Chop, okay ban it, if not Machamp can either be healthy or fall to wherever it belongs.
Is this an example of that? What healthy things does Machamp do without Dynamic Punch? Does UU want Machamp? If they do, they don't really need OU's permission, they can kind of just take him, this is old gen tiering, tiers are locked in outside of suspect tests and bans.
I think one of the "geniuses" of the "council" of gen 4 got haxed to death and he was so mad that made this whole shitty lobby campaign to ban a pokemon that is not even that good. The fact that jirachi is still there but machamp is not is the whole proof of it. Gen 4 is the metagame I liked the most out of all metagames, and I've never used him and I think it is an average pokemon with a luck based strategy just like jirachi is. If you are removing luck based strategy, please remove jirachi and you know what, also remove blizzard, thunder, fire blast, focus miss, etc etc.... pkmn is a luck based game, even 100% accuracy attacks are based on luck because they don't do consistent damage. This ban is just stupid and proves that smogon "council" are just regular human beings that also do stupid things like everyone else, so anything the say/do should be taken with a pinch of salt.
This is explained in the video if you watch it.
I think one of the things that annoys me the most is you have to be "good enough" to vote to begin with. The fact they're saying "if you aren't good enough your opinion doesn't matter".
If that's the case, just ban things from OST and other tournaments.
While I agree with limiting complex bans, this feels like an exception. Dynamic Punch isn’t Machamp’s signature move; several other mons get it too, and it wouldn’t be all that fun if those mons spammed it either. It really seems like Dynamic Punch is the thing that’s causing all the problems here.
@@calvinnguyen1870 they can't spam Dynamic Punch, because they don't have Machamp's signature ability.
"We won't ban jirachi because it's too important for the metagame"
Bronzong:
Machamp: *gets banned*
Jirachi: Hehe I'm in danger.
Togekiss: *slowly hides in the bush*
These mfs do anything but suspect jirachi or iron head
The pro players were actually polled a while ago about what they wanted to be suspected. Jirachi got 50% of people wanting to ban it, while Machamp got 70%.
Jirachi will be suspected next. Please do not direct anger at the Gen 4 council. They want a better metagame. They're doing good work
@@handoverthestromboli6715 Yeah it's really sad seeing the DPP council doing their best meanwhile they can't pass any bans without the permission of the overall Smogon council.
"it punishes stall"
There, you answered it. Metagames tend to shift from offense to stall when it's less of a ladder and more of a SPL format. The Gen 4 OU we see in tournaments (like all past gen OU) is vastly different from how the ladder went by. The same thing happened with Clefable but the other way around: it was a niche and generally bad pick at the ladder, because games were more offensive, but the stall-y meta we have now feels like home to the pink blob.
A similar situation happened with Cloyster in gen 5 OU: gemless Cloyster shouldn't be a threat, but the defensive turn the meta took made it a menace.
As for the ban, the move itself should be banned, not the pokemon. Much like Double Team, it's nothing but luck fishing regardless of who uses it or if No Guard is in effect.
But stall also has one of the best matchups into it? Reflect latias, nidoquren, hippo, phys def rotom..
It causes balance and offense to deal with a lot of luck which they cannot afford to lose turns to
this is not even close to true. Have ever even played a game of dpp ou?
I was so confused during 4:18 until I remembered that all Rotoms were electric-ghost back then lolll
Banning champ before even TOUCHING Jirachi is the dumbest thing ever
That happened because Machamp was more unpopular (more people wanted action on it) and also because banning it has basically no negative consequences as opposed to the problems with banning Jirachi. There's no rule that says that problems have to be dealt with in strict order of how serious they are.
They will deal with the vampires once they deal with the ghouls, it’s simple.
@@CantusTropusThere's also no rule saying that a higher % of players voting yes means you need to do it first either. This argument falls apart with the knowledge that the tiering council has prevented the gen 4 council from even looking into a complex ban for jirachi.
@ball-mu8it They will never deal with the vampires
@@ALittleMessiThe pro players were actually polled a while ago about what they wanted to be suspected. Jirachi got 50% of people wanting to ban it, while Machamp got 70%. Knowing this, IT WOULD BE INSANE TO SUSPECT RACHI BEFORE MACHAMP. People would have lost their fucking minds about how awful and undemocratic and literally the soviet union the Gen 4 council is.
You are right that the tiering council is lame for blocking complex bans. Absolute loser behavior to be arguing for """""policy"'''"" and against having an actually good ruleset
The fact they banned small fry Machamp and not the OP Jirachi that is even more luck based shows how stupid and self centered the SMOGON council is. They don't want a healthy meta, they want a meta that fits their specific fetishes and ideologies.
alternative title : " why it took 19 alts before Jimothy Cool rage quit Gen 4 OU"
I know you probably won’t see this but I’m a big fan of these videos because I’ve never been able to understand things about competitive Pokemon so these videos teach me things I didn’t know
This is Houndstone ban all over again.
It is because of bans like this that I don't play competitive singles and follow vgc. Smogon literally picks and choses who they want in each tier and are not consistent with their choices. No other game has such bad tier list bans as Smogon.
Machamp flexed on his haters a little to hard it seems
No, absolutely not. The entire luck argument falls apart completely when you consider jirachi. That mon has been abusing luck for all these years, and even lead to one of the most infamous meltdowns in showdown history. If Machamp is banned because it relies on luck, then jirachi should be banned as well.
What does Machamp do that jirachi doesn't? He hits hard. What does jirachi do? Wish support, para spread, flinch spam, has far better typing, and a ton of other utilities.
The key difference here is that if you want a hard hitter, even in the fighting type, then you don't *need* Machamp. This doesn't uproot other fair forms of team support.
The utility that Jirachi provides is far more than Iron Head, and there's entire styles of using Jirachi that matter here. Really what should be done is just a ban of Serene Grace + Flinch, that's what people are most upset about.
The pro players were actually polled a while ago about what they wanted to be suspected. Jirachi got 50% of people wanting to ban it, while Machamp got 70%.
Jirachi will be suspected, calm down.
PSA THE TIERING COUNCIL THAT RULES OVER ALL GENS STOPPED THE GEN 4 COUNCIL FROM DOING A COMPLEX JIRACHI BAN BECAUSE MUH RULES.
😂
Apparently having to use more than two words "(pokemon) banned" is complex.
The tiering council are literally made of toddlers.
TRUE! The gen 4 council actually want to make the metagame fun. but these loser ass political science dropouts in the "policy council" raise their index finger, say, "umm actually" and then shove out up our ass
Personally, while obviously there's no point to "preserving" Machamp without Dynamic Punch, I still think the better option is to ban the move rather than the mon in this case. Machamp ends up stuck being useless either way, either it's useless in Ubers or it's useless in OU because it doesn't have the one tool that makes it good, but if the move got banned rather than the mon, then that prevents people from attempting to cheese a win through the even more luck-based strategy of slapping Dynamic Punch on a worse Pokemon and fishing for the 50% chance to even hit at all as well as the confusion chance. Obviously, Dynamic Punch without No Guard is a bad strategy, but it's still a luck-based strategy that can technically work to cheese out an unfair win. If the purpose of the ban is to remove a luck-based element from the game, then Dynamic Punch itself is the culprit and should just be gone.
And before anyone screeches "but that's a complex ban", no, it's not. A complex ban is a COMBINATION, e.g. banning No Guard Dynamic Punch. I think the move itself probably should've been banned as a whole regardless of ability.
Is not complex ban but the smogon admin will ask for more that one broken users to aprove a move ban because is the only problematic users they will only accept a machamp suspects
@@lucasalarcon3230 But the thing is, Machamp isn't a BROKEN user, it's a manageable Pokemon that simply introduces a lot of luck into the game.
By that definition, all Dynamic Punch users are "problematic" even if they don't have 100% accuracy on the move, even if they literally never see use, just because the move itself introduces a lot of luck into the game and potentially would allow those Pokemon to beat things they otherwise shouldn't.
@@Milesprowerthegamer machamp needs to hit one flip coin because of no guard, have stab, huge attacks and payback for ghost every other users have to first hit the move and later pray for the RNG confusion plus find a way to punish ghost type. The combination of things that make this annoying only exist on manchamp so smogon will never aprove a dynamic punch ban under this scenario
By the closing argument's logic they should ban Pokemon that learn double team, sand attack, baton pass, etc...
just ban every pokemon with an RNG move or accuracy less than 100
@@harrywang4769ban every move that can critical hit
As someone with no stakes in gen 4 smogon, it's pretty funny to hear that a pokemon got banned because of luck but at the same time it's also getting banned for removing luck.
All roads lead to Clef, the moment Clef reared her ugly ass head is when the narrative of DPP swapped from better than ADV to an rng nightmare.
I’d be okay with a Machamp ban if Jirachi goes too.
However, if Dynamicpunch is the sole reason why, then I think we need to take a look at Dynamicpunch first. We’ve already banned Sleep-inducing moves because of their high-impact but RNG-reliant power, and Dynamicpunch is pretty much that. An RNG-fest when not on Champ like Hypnosis, less of one but still an RNG-fest when on Champ, just like Spore.
Smogon regularly shoots down requests based solely on the rationale that the meta is old and should be left alone. I think the complex ban hangups are no longer necessary here.
Even though this topic is complex, I think that my opinion with the majority of people, it should've been either a Dynamic punch Complex Ban, or a reworking on how flinching moves should work. (I mean by removing DynamicPunch/Iron Head, or any other solution).
In my personal experience (statistically irrelevant), Machamp has never been a problem, I always considered it too slow and prone to just inviting Jirachi onto the field and probably doing nothing. It's presence created a braindead playstyle of just "click the confusion button" and hope for the best. I can't tell you the number of games that started with a lead Machamp on the other team, I OHKO or 2KO them in the first few turns, and they immediately quit the game, because their set was all based on clicking DynamicPunch and setting Jirachi free.
At some points (low ladder) you could literally get by having 5 Pokemon with Lum Berry equipped, and literally win 60% of your games. It was annoying, but I recognize that Machamp was not at fault, not even Para-spam was at fault, hell my team is even centered on using Paralysis through Togekiss to speed control the other team.
In any case, this ban seems to be more of a desperation ban, as the reticence of Smogon to do complex bans that would address the problem more directly ends up banning a Pokemon that really didn't need it.
dynamic punch complex ban makes zero sense. There is no reason to use machamp without dynamic punch. Its the same as banning machamp
@@tarunyadav3567ok then he becomes irrelevant, the issue is solved, what's the problem? after all, it's not like he was relevant before.
better to go with the solution that uproots the part that people don't like compared to overacting, right?
@@tarunyadav3567 I mean, fair enough. If the only thing Machamp was usable for is to click Dynamic Punch, then he was not worthy for OU then, Machamp was a niche pick.
Look, let's make a comparison. If I took Iron Head from Jirachi. Would Jirachi be unusable? I.H. it's Jirachi's best move and frankly one of the reason why the meta has been so warped around para flinching, since it opened the gates to that kind of playstyle. Surely it's only the fault of the move that it's OU.
But then you see that Jirachi can spread Paralysis and Burn through Body Slam and Fire Punch. Pass wishes around, pivot around certain metagame staples like Latias, Scizor and Fire-less Azelf. Jirachi is more then the sum of its parts.
Honestly, Machamp has more than Dynamic Punch, it still hits like a truck and it's bulk is respectable enough to guarantee a comeback in some scenarios. But frankly, it's not OU level.
@@tarunyadav3567 Besides banning Machamp, bans him from EVERY other tier. UU/RU/NU. If Dynamic Punch is taken away, they could allow it to go down to UU (I know the metagames are fixed, but it's a possibility)
Bro really said reticence
Very few people actually played Gen 4 OU, so they just swept the issues under the rug as they thought nobody would notice. Meanwhile Gen 3 OU is still attracting new players because of how flexible it is, keeping its community alive and fresh, which indirectly also causes new players to try out Gen 4 OU.
Gen 4 is rigid, its community isn't willing to change and accept that they are wrong. They keep their ancient tiers with barely any updates because they don't want to clean up the mess. New players end up leaving because nothing makes sense anymore, Gen 4 OU and the viability rankings are like day and night.
machamp got banned before jirachi. skull
?
The gen 4 community very clearly wants to change things, and the biggest problems pretty much everyone agrees lies with Jirachi and Iron Head specifically
The problem is the Tiering Council not letting us even try to address this because of their insistence on keeping everything simple and bare when it comes to bans and retiering
Ban Jirachi and then deal with the aftermath. The problem is begging for a complex ban.
if no guard + dynamic punch is the problem, why ban the whole pokemon and not just the specific combination that's problematic?
Same for jirachi, if jirachi has good use outside of an annoying gimmick too and the only thing that's problematic is the specific combination of serene grace + iron head, why discuss banning jirachi entirely and not just the combination that's problematic?
If you ban dynamic+no guard then it is the same as banning machamp. No one will seriously touch machamp without those. With jirachi is makes sense to ban iron head cause it has use outside of iron head.
But IMO even then it is like "ban stab moves on dialga to make it ou usable type shit". I think we should just ban jirachi completely. "muh integral to the metagame pokemon" is nonsense. If its broken it should be banned.
The community used Ban Hammer.
Machamp tried to avoid the incoming attack but couldn't due to No Guard.
Critical Hit!!!
It was Super Effective!
Machamp has been banned.
Because Smogon's general tolerance for bullshit changed over the course of the years. I feel like people were more tolerant of luck based nonsense back in the day because "eh. It's just how Pokemon is". But nowadays, since competitive pokemon is more and more popular, there's more incentive to make it more...well ... competitive
Nahh they were not tolerant about Machamp. If you brought Machamp in a Tournament you were basically admitting you're worse than your opponent and just want to try cheese a win. Use Machamp and everyone hurled every possible slur at you, the niche subcommunity wasnt gonna like you and that was a good enough deterence to using Machamp (the smogon community has progressed a lot in just a few years lol)
One thing important to understand about strategy games is that variance does not inherently reduce the skill cap of a game. In fact, in most situations, the opposite is true.
To take card games as an example, removing mechanics like hidden information and shuffling would vastly reduce the ways in which a player could productively interact with that game and, in most cases, when enough variance is removed from a game, the game becomes solvable.
Solving a game state is extremely interesting and satisfying, but playing an already solved game state is much less so unless you were not already aware of the solution.
Variance is positive and healthy for a game as a rule and this is a particularly interesting case because whether or not it is healthy variance relies too heavily on the opponent bringing too small of a selection of defensive switches for balance match-ups, while against stall it is almost always healthy variance and against offense it is often no variance at all.
As usual, they could have just banned the move and not the mon, but that's too hard a concept to grasp for the smogon doctrine
They only do that if move proves to be broken on multiple pokemon see Baton Pass or Last Respects Ban in Scarlet & Violet from both OU and Ubers (tho only Basculegion-M was prominent in Ubers), so Dynamic Punch ban would only be on the table if suddenly his pre-evo Machoke would do the same shit in a metagame relevant capacity (which won't happen because of its shit stats). So its not that they absolutely never do that and just the requirements are really high in comparison to Pokemon bans even from Ubers these days.
@@LeticiaGrey19 Old news pal, that's why i called it a doctrine
This is a case where move ban makes no sense. Machamp is the only user of the move and there is no reason to use machamp outside the move. You are actually stupid and don't know shit
@@LeticiaGrey19 Or if the move is uncompetitive, which Dynamic Punch is, no guard or no no guard.
You weren't ever going to load up Dynamic Punchless machamp on gen 4 ou. Ever.
You are complaining for the sake of complaining
Love that machamp is gone but we still have to deal with clefable or Jirachi
There is precedent for simply banning an ability. Sand Veil and Snow Cloak got banned because of evasion, so I think No Guard should have just been banned, allowing people to still use Guts if they wanted.
Sand Veil and Snow Cloak were fundamentally gamebreaking on multiple pokemon in both DPP & BW (especially Garchomp and Gliscor) is the thing, Machamp is the only fully evolved Pokemon with No Guard and that ability is a non-issue if mon doesn't get shit like Dynamic Punch let alone OHKO moves (thankfully Game Freak hasn't come up with that just yet).
BKC - we are free ....
I feel like this is a little overblown. Gen 9 allows Pokemon to literally change their type and counter another pokemon at will on a whim and its "completely competitively healthy", meanwhile the devs gave Machamp an ability that allows it to take advantage of the upside of one move and people want it banned. I understand it's not fun, but enjoyment is subjective. I guarantee if you ask a majority of pokemon players if playing Stall is fun they'd probably say no, but we don't ban PP stalling because it's not fun. Machamp isn't putting stress on teambuilding, it isn't an overbearing force, and it's a perfectly normal pokemon outside of one status condition a move applies. Gen 4 players just got bored of playing the same meta
Pretty hypocritical if you ask me. The comparison at the end doesnt really work either, because dynamic punch isnt machamps signature move. Its a shame because you could so easily replace it with CC and go for a gut flame orb set or anything else really. Machamp is versatile and this way of banning just kills creativity.
And I said its hypocritical because in the past specific stuff was banned already. Ninjask was banned from using BP, Blaziken was banned from using Speedboost as an ability etc.
pokemon has checks and balances for every "luck" based strategy built into the game already. ie confusion - own tempo, lum berry, etc. the problem is people complain they cant build a team to cover all of them so they whine and decide just to ban those strategies instead. Now we get a boring meta game where only a few strategies are present and its still luck-based anyway at the end of the day
“We don’t ban individual moves because every Pokémon is the sum of its parts”
Meanwhile Minimize, Double Team, Fissure, Horn Drill, Sheer Cold, and Guillotine:
They do ban individual moves from being used by ALL pokemon, that’s not considered a complex ban.
What is considered a complex ban by Smogon is banning a move on a specific pokemon but not on others. Hope that clears it up a bit.
@ Then ban Dynamic punch. If the issue is “this move introduces an unfun level of variance” then dynamic punch falls into the exact same category as minimize, swagger, and OHKOs. We don’t ban Muk because it can learn minimize. Sending Machamp to Ubers is a foolish solution that’s inconsistent with the tiering they have now.
@@ellieporter3270 Hey dude that’s what I voted for(Dynamic Punch ban) maybe you should’ve gotten your reqs if it seriously bothered you that much. Would’ve helped
@@i_like_chomp6382 My ass was not ever hitting those reqs lmao. I was under the impression that Dpunch wasn’t ever on the table though because of Smogon higher ups, just Machamp as a whole, which is what I’m criticizing.
@ No why wouldn’t it be on the table, literally everyone was saying that on the forums. It just so happens that some players thought there could be a precedent set if Machamp was banned as a whole in order to ban Jirachi eventually.
Why usage isn’t everything. The machamp theorem. 😂
My philosophy is we should avoid as many bans as possible to implement Game Freak's vision (i.e. they gave Machamp, Jirachi, Dugtrio, etc. these tools some find "broken" or "lucky" or whatever for a reason. Let them in). Now obviously there are cases where the pokemon in general is too powerful - typically legendaries are banished to Uber on behalf of their gargantuan BST compared to the mons available in OU.
Something Freezai said about "opting in" made a connection in my head. Yes, competitive Pokemon is, by nature, filled with RNG on almost every turn. If you don't want to deal with that, then go play another competitive esport or stick to a casual playthrough of pokemon. Likewise, there are so many metagame options nowadays, so if you don't want to opt-in to what you perceive to be a "lucky" or "unfun" (that whole viewpoint of a metagame should be fun doesn't make much sense to me but i'll skip over it), there are other metagames to go play. You can play Gen 4 UU or go play something like Gen 7 OU or whatever else like Follow the Leader. Also, again, there are always RNG factors at play. You might have to hit/dodge a 70% focus blast to win the game, just like you might need to dodge a confusion hit to win against Machamp. Frustrating? Sure, but that's what we all implicitly agreed to when we decided to search for a competitive pokemon match.
Finally, I do agree there are ways to manage Machamp as Freezai laid out. And his point about people use the good strategies to win is a favor against banning imo. If Machamp was truly this gargantuan threat, it would be higher than B in viability; it would have usage higher than 13%. But instead it was mostly a matchup/luck fish poke. As I said above, is it frustrating to get sucked into the vortex and lose to that? Yeah, but things like that happen all the time in pokemon. Use your own paraspam if it's so good - moves like Thunder Wave are good on current staples anyways. Maybe bulk/fat playstyles just aren't meant to be good in Gen 4 OU; not every playstyle is good in every metagame.
Idk this is disappointing to hear about from someone who loved playing Gen 4 a few years ago. Feels like a slippery slope and Jirachi should be banned too if they want to be consistent
@@seanscott2677 I don't understand this idea of the purity of the base game.
The point of smogon banning things is that they provide a more competitive, balanced, and fun metagame. And then there are tons of different tiers so you can play with the pokémon you like the most and whichever flavor of game balance you enjoy with.
Why are you against removing toxic rng mechanics or broken stuff like dug, but then fine with legendaries being banned because of BST. By what basis is BST a worthy metric for removal but not having an overpowered ability or move or some uncompetitive rng strat isn't?
Do you also want freeze clause lifted and ohko/evasion moves to make a comeback then? This is all just making the game less diverse and less competitive in exchange for some sort of purity to the base game.
Love this style of video from you, the editing is always top notch (-:
You know what would be a lower cost? Banning dynamic punch
Smogon: we ban stuff.
As an outsider, it sounds ridiculous, so I suppose they're banning Jirachi then?
Somebody introducing a new pokemon to one of the stalest metagames ever:
Banning the move Dynamic Punch is distinctly different from banning Annhilape's Rage Fist in my opinion. Annhilape with Rage Fist is banworthy because it is too powerful and overwhelming of a threat for the OU metagame, whereas Machamp with Dynamic Punch is banworthy because it is not fun to play against. Machamp is not too powerful for OU play with Dynamic Punch such that it needs to be moved to ubers, it is only too unfun, so removing the element that makes the game unfun makes much more sense to me. And it's noteworthy that Dynamic Punch makes the game unfun when it's on _any_ Pokemon as well. It's just that Machamp is the only relevant Pokemon that uses it.
CRAZY thumbnail
yeah I did a whole double take when I saw that
banning D punch is the better move, a machamp ban makes him useless garateed, banning D punch gets rid of the unfun move for any other potential abusers later as well as solving the macahmp d punch issue.
If you wanna use Machamp, go to Gen 2 or 3. Hes super fun in both! Dpunchless Machamp is absolute garbage in gen 4, complex ban was unnecessary.
@@handoverthestromboli6715 banning a move across the board for everyone is not a complex ban. a complex ban would be banning pokemon with no guard using no guard but allowing it for non-noguard pokemon.
Listening to this analysis makes me wonder how much RNG is too much RNG, competitively speaking. Will we maybe see a day where paralysis is also banned in a competitive format because of the chance of being unable to move combined with other luck elements like flinching?
I'm mostly curious to know how far competitive players are willing to go. Will it be like in the Smash Brothers community, where even a slight slope on a stage can be seen as too much of an advantage to keep it in the competitive space?
Personally I’ve always found machamp to be a manageable threat that doesn’t appear too often and don’t think it should have been banned but I can see why some want it gone
Also to people who don't know old gen mechanics, paralyze back in the day cut your speed down to a QUARTER, not just in half.
So Champ with ANY para spam would outspeed you 100% of the time
I'll be honest, I thought it still quartered Speed today too
I have a hot take. Its probably going to be unpopular. But the fact that Smogon would rather ban hammer Machamp over curbing stall among other nonsense is why I stopped playing competitive.
Stall imo. Is just as unhealthy for the game as dynamic punch Machamp, especially since nobody wants to spend an eternity staring at a screen.
Tbh stall wasn't really the most vulnerable to Machamp and the teamcomps enabling it since they usually could stall out Dynamic Punch PP without Machamp doing too much unrepairable damage, but more balance/bulky offense teamcomps which hated it way more when their often less bulky Latias or Zapdos or something else got confused to death.
if No Guard Dynamic Punch is such a problem, just ban No Guard. iirc, the Machop line are the only pokemon in the Gen4 games that get it, and it's not like they don't have another ability in Guts. seriously, if they didn't want to make a complex ban, just banning No Guard would work fine.
Edit: Just checked. the Machop Line are indeed the only pokemon in the Gen4 games that have No Guard
The double standart
@@mauricio6646 mhmm
apparently, the Tiering Council didn't allow this as an option... for some reason
@@Alg3br4 which is bizarre AF
They seem to be against the idea of banning an ability when only one single Pokémon (line) has it, even if that lone Mon is problematic with it. This seems really arbitrary again, but for no good _objective_ reason at that. :|
Using the usage stats as the main and almost singular metric for balancing the Pokemon formats has always been wild to me. I firmly believe that all people don't just play to win but a large majority also want to have fun. For the more extreme stragagies like hard stall, hyper offensive, para flinch, etc. Some people really enjoy them and will try to make them work even when they aren't as good from a win percentage perspective. This will somewhat over represent them compared to where they might be objectively based on win percentage (eg. Wolfeyvgc using perish trap) Conversely when these stragagies are at a top level they will be somewhat under represented because some percentage of people don't like to use hard stall or other 'gimmick' strategies that are all or nothing. In this video it is partially explained that machamp maybe under represented due to the fact that many people don't like to rely on the rng heavy confusion strategy.
You see this in games like melee where some people don't like to play jigglypuff and fox is overrepresented, in games like magic the gathering where some people have strong preferences for controlling decks or aggressive decks, or in starcraft where some people only play Protos or only Zerg. I'm glad it's seems to be working well for Pokemon but it is endlessly surprising to me
Bro, I played this on Shoddy Battle years ago, and there was no point ever where Machamp could have ever been banned. What happened? 😭😭
3:24 Revive cats
The great thing about the ban of machamp is that in its uber tier strategy it quite literally says "please do not use machamp."
I dont see how banning moves on pokemon is different from banning item combinations
No one complains about the lati twins in OU not being able to hold the soul dew prior to there nerf.
I dont see why jirachi or machamp not being able to use iron head or dynamic punch isnt the same case.
BKC brought up how the dpp council wanted iron head as a whole banned but the over all OU council for past gens didnt let that happen.
But I feel like thats a nice middle ground.
While it's very funny and interesting to see Machamp do something besides get ohko'd by psychic. It doesn't seem very fun to play against. And to quote a legendary figure in gaming "If it's not fun, why bother?"
LOL. Machamp getting banned before Jirachi is so sad...
This whole decision/ scenario made me never want to play Gen 4 ou again call me what you want I refuse to touch it now
DUDE when this game came out I used No-Guard Machamp in the Battle Hall, that one part of the battle frontier where you only brought one pokemon. I've known it was busted for 19 years lmfaooooo
Smogon would rather ban a pokmeon rather than use slowbro.
why does how a pokemon is tiered affect a pokemon like machamp who's issue isn't his strength but his RNG? the video makes it sound like the hit was NOT for strength reasons
I played Gen 4 on cart back in the day and I hated playing against Machamp so much that I commissioned someone to breed me a 5 IV Slowbro specifically to counter it.
I personally love the "ban pokemon not sum of it's parts" thing
There is ONE exception to this I think should have been made that wasn't. Doubles has the terror that is dondozogiri. In smogon tatsugiri is banned why? Because dondozogiri is too strong.
They could have banned commander instead and that stops the duo from being used. Banning tatsugiri does make both remarkably different in doubles, banning commander would make them both remarkably different and not the sum of all their parts, but it would allow tatsu to be used in lower doubles tiers. Where I think it should belong if you don't want dozogiri
Personally I feel like dozo tatsu and dozogiri are 3 almost entirely different Pokemon. So banning one to ban another feels wrong. It's like if we banned hoopa base cause hoppa unbound was too op
Imagine banning intended game mechanics. Its the same nonsense as banning the Sleep moves. they were put in the game to be used.
As time has gone, their ban decisions pushed me closer and closer to VGC. The sleep ban completely did it
Not sure what's more ridiculous the fact that a manageable Pokémon got banned or the fact that a stronger Pokémon with similar issues didn't.
They should have banned Dynamic Punch No-Guard. Machamp has use outside of confusion cheese.
Lavos: You couldn't live with your own failure. Where did that lead you? Back to me.
In before machoke paraspam teams start dominating the ladder
even as an outsider, I'm firmly in the ban dynamic punch and iron head jirachi camp. Problem is it seems like the people at the top (not all ppl at smogon of course) have huge egos because they run a pokemon battle sim. It's pretty sad actually
The reason is that confusion is very annoying when paired with an teammate that spreads paralysis such as Thunder Wave or Body Slam.
And this is how it looks like when getting hit by Dynamic Punch:
1st turn confusion: *gets hit itself in confusion* PBR announcer: "Oh no, It attacked itself!"
2nd turn confusion *gets hit again because of RNG* PBR announcer: "It attacked itself again, That has got to hurt!"
It's because the community is getting smaller and smaller so they can pick apart OU into whatever they want. A real examination of what is wrong would ban Jirachi too, but the people just like Jirachi more and don't want to remove a load-bearing pokemon and deal with the meta totally changing.
Its not really about playerbase getting smaller (still more than in the Pokemon Online days when BW was current gen) and more that Jirachis case is so divided between those fearing the metagame ramifications and those wanting to get rid of its flinch and status shenanigans that its hard to justify the suspect when the chance is high that it barely misses 50 or 60% banvotes and time is essentially wasted.
Machamp wasn't that, it leaving barely changes much except making dedicated paraspam teams a bit less common (and even then you can build viable teams around that shit with abusers other than Machamp) and so outside of those who would rather see more ability bans no one really misses Machamp.
Thanks.
Kids that were BORN DURING DPP are now turning 18. Wild.
What’s the music that plays at 1:36
Academy ace tournament battle theme
He wasn’t banned in Gen 4 he was banned in a casual battle format that jumps to ban anything they get the chance to
“This Pokémon can sometimes beat its checks, so we banned it.”
???
Can’t wait to see bans for Blissey, Jiraxchi, etc.
Get this parafusion and Serene Grace flichspam horseshit out of the game completely then.
One must imagine Jimothy Cool happy