prolly gonna be my last post on the matter and hopefully will address everything I want to here, will probably echo a fair amount of shit that's alrdy been said but I find this thread in general frustrating for probably everyone that's paid any attention to it
first of all it fuckin blows my mind that this is how this situation has played out in general, I literally made the below post after a
full week of dead silence where everything already existing on the thread bar a post from TDK was overwhelmingly in favor of voting. So anyone that did not speak up about their distaste in voting on quag should be blaming themselves, as has been highlighted by like 12 other people in this thread, just wanted to point out that there was deadass a full week of dust collecting on this thread before we actually decided to go through with voting, idk what y'all were doing during that time.
so uhhh we tryna vote or uhhh... aha
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I think anyone talking about how "lazy" testing quag is has an understandable point but ignores a lot of baggage that goes with taking the "not lazy" route in this scenario.
Problems with voting on Scizor
1. Scizor leaving would completely abolish the foundation that the tier was built upon and the ramifications would be plentiful without question, using this as a reason not to ban something would traditionally be looked at, but things can't always be that black and white. In this scenario, I believe a line is crossed to where this line of thinking is okay, imo.
2. This one is the most relevant to this thread; this meta is not active currently. There is a grand total of 2 MAYBE 3 people that build this meta in 2021 and that's a rather ambitious stretch since UUPL is over. @ Everyone who truly believes banning Scizor is what we should do rn; are you really interested enough in SM UU to pick up the pieces and help put them back together after you push us to blow the meta up? It's not your responsibility, so why would you be?... And if y'all aren't down... who is? This player base is not poppin, UUPL is over and won't be back for a while, it is no longer SM. With this in mind, how can you reasonably sit here and scold people for not wanting to blow the meta up by banning Scizor simply because in your mind it's the "not lazy" route?
I am not putting words in your mouths by any means so if you truly feel like you'd be interested and would actively play and build this meta to make the "not lazy" option viable... then that's dope. But given the current state of the player base that is not something I can realistically assume would happen. ORAS even has a more invested player base by a fair margin and it's more than clear that's the case given the amount of inactive users in the current quag vote.
3. Scizor already got a public suspect and was decided to be kept. Yes, you can believe this was a poor decision but it was still a decision that was made. While that's completely fair, with the above points in mind I don't think it's a crime to look elsewhere.
IF YOU ARE OF THE BELIEF THAT STALL IS NOT SOMETHING WE SHOULD LOOK INTO THAT'S JIGGY W ME BRO BUT PLS DON'T SIT HERE AND TALK ABOUT SCIZOR, BECAUSE DOING NOTHING IS THE FAR BETTER ALTERNATIVE AND SUMMING IT UP AS LAZINESS IS IGNORING THE FACT THAT THIS IS INDEED A LOWER TIER OLD GEN W/O A FLOURISHING PLAYER BASE AND
THERE'S NO DIRECT BEST OUTCOME TO THIS
The HO Comparison
While HO is extremely consistent and strong in this tier similar to stall, I don't think the reason we're looking at stall is as simple as "lol people don't like being stalled" and I think it's extremely ignorant to sum it up as that within the context of the tier SM UU. The thing that I can get behind with the statement of "HO is even harder to prep for than stall!!" is the fact that HO's countermeasures might be even grayer and less concrete than stall's.
When you're looking at a playstyle and not a specific mon in the builder, naturally what you consider counterplay will be less concrete because you're covering something that is simply broader. With stall, reliable hazards are a big deal, Knock Off users as well, those are some examples of counterplay to stall, but then you have the things that fall under the "stall-breaker" umbrella. Breakers that traditionally within the context of whatever tier have a good matchup vs stall, Celebi being one example.
While there're certainly mons like that in HO matchups, good examples in SM UU being fat steels, fat prim, mimikyu, etc. There're certainly fewer and there's more distance in-between. My counter-argument to this is that while I think both playstyles are way safer than we're used to in other metagames, HO consistently rolls winnable matchups a lot more frequently while stall feels a bit harsher in the positive direction. I believe HO rolls even matchups more frequently than stall in this tier, and on top of that I think other looser counterplay towards HO is a lot more natural than examples of that vs stall. Having good speed tiers in general as well as general speed control (scarfer/prio) being one of the best examples. I have a lot of experience using "stallbreaker Mew" in this tier and I've found that it probably has a more blatantly obnoxious mu vs HO > stall in all honesty, for example. It's neutral ass typing helps it generally stomach things from offensive threats when healthy but the big thing is it's solid speed tier in unison with wisp and taunt. Not super duper relevant but just an example of smth naturally rolling a good HO mu due to access to common and natural things like a base 100 speed tier and wisp.
I also think HO's strength doesn't directly have a ton to do with whether we should nerf stall or not in the grand scheme of things. I don't think stall's existence is the primary thing keeping it from being just absolutely disgustingly broken to the point where we
have to do something about it and while I believe it plays a role I don't think there's a ton of weight to that argument given it's still hypothetical in the first place.
Everything else
I believe part of the disconnect between at least
some of us is our opinions on whether it's worth it to look into stall in the first place, that the tier without stall might be even shittier than it is now, or whatever else. While I understand where these people are coming from because SM atm is as Christo said a pretty solved tier, little room for creativity... thus, shaking anything up might be messy in general. This traditionally is not something you put a lot of thought into when making decisions on whether a pokemon or whatever tf else needs to go, and I don't personally believe it crosses the hypothetical line I drew for Scizor's situation to where it's not worth, that's literally just my opinion though and at the end of the day that's all theorizing and I cant really fault anyone for feeling differently on something so flimsy.
I believe threats that could potentially get out of hand in this hypothetical stall-nerfed meta are both lati and malt who're already extremely strong in their own rights. Lati would have more freedom to run z moves that aren't drag z more often, and malt would have more freedom to run shit that isn't dd refresh/facade/etc more often. You could technically go down this tier and say this for a lot of diff threats as well, even including Scizor with lo ada bb being less necessary, to Togekiss being able to run NP w/o fight z or hb more often, etc etc etc. One good thing abt Lati and Scizor though in this scenario is that quite a fair amount of people prep for all the diff cm/sd variants regardless, not that this just makes all of the above nill but it's smth. All in all, I don't sit here pondering this for hours and come to the conclusion that nerfing stall just isn't realistic with the health of the tier in mind, but that's just me.
The fact of the matter is that people who have played this metagame in recent memory are dissatisfied with it, if you're not good for you but others are. "I kinda like this rock paper scissors shit actually" is literally not an arguing point, your feelings and opinion are valid but just say you're voting no ban and move on. Also, I certainly don't think it's just outright impossible by any means to concoct a team of six pokemon that has a winnable stall mu whilst being good in the rest of the metagame, but I don't think that nullifies anything that's been said. Actively building this metagame is helldick and the fact that it's possible doesn't take away from anything I said in my second post.
Sidenote: "Rock paper scissors" can hardly be labeled as a competitive game and a tier that draws direct comparisons to that as much as I've seen in this thread and otherwise is probably a bad one.
I understand looking at this quagsire vote like it's a shitty midground to fixing this tier and under the circumstances that this was cg or just more optimistic circumstances in general, I would personally have issue with this as well. I think stall's stranglehold on the tier is very real and even a fair amount of you in the dnb side of things have noted that, and while it might not be the crack or many fucking cracks in the foundation, it is something that at least a fair chunk of the player base feels strongly about, and under these circumstances I do not see an issue with the fact that Quagsire as a standalone mon is not breaking the tier/outright broken/etc.
If this vote must be stopped due to all of the shit that's piled up in this thread and summed up well by Tony, then so be it, point your frustration with this vote being "rushed" somewhere else though because honestly in real-time this vote was not rushed at all, it looks that way in the aftermath certainly but like I said there was literally a week of no posts whatsoever after the thread had been up for a fair amount of time already.
playstyle itself is being viewed as unhealthy just because it's doing what it has always done
This is also confusing because I don't know many (if any) tiers where stall is this objectively consistent and is safely spammed by the majority of relevant players. Stall as a playstyle is talked down on for being fishy in a large portion of existing metagames but it is rare that it ever roles unwinnable matchups in SM UU, which
pokemonisfun has detailed in literally dozens of posts over time by now.
At the end of the day, I care about this tier more than any other tier I have played in my life by a rather large margin and just want it to be the best version of itself. If we can reasonably sit here and say "hey looking at Scizor again is realistic!" then ye bro sure fuck it if that's not a load of horseshit, which rn it, unfortunately, feels that way.
Would also like to applaud
Lilburr for her general activity and performance as a figure of power on this site so far, posts like yours on this thread are refreshing.
where's m00la and bdhb when you need em man they'd surely put a stop to this tomfoolery