Smogon RBY Tournament

[t3h Icy]

www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3447711

Thanks to Earthworm for mentioning it in the shoutbox. Smogon is running a tournament for RBY, which could possibly be up to 64, 96 or even 128 players. Mind you, most are probably not superb players that specialize in future generations, but you could take that as an easy way to run through the tournament.

The tournament follows our rules, but Wrapping is legal, it's Single Elimination, but sets are 2/3 which is nice.

I'm personally not interested, but I posted this here for others that may be. Good luck to you if you do sign-up. (And make sure to abuse the fuck out of Dragonite ;>)

[pocket]

I signed in with WaterWizard and Crystal - I need a battle mate to test out my new team (it has wrap). When do you guys usually online NBS? Is rby2k server still active??

[Crystal_]

I didn't sign in!

?!?!?!?!

[Destiny Warrior]

Crystal you meanie I was banking on you to beat zarator

[Crystal_]

no way. ill be out all summer

[pocket]

hmm you might want to inform enzo, so he could bring in one of the subs in for you.

[Nitro]

Wrap is so ghey

[pocket]

ghey but riddled with problems, such as being unreliably inaccurate and the wrappers being relatively fragile (boltbeam weak). By no means is the strategy ban-worthy, imo. Agility + Wrap is controversial.

[Nitro]

It's easily bannable to me. 85% accuracy is very accurate when you only really need it to hit 3-4 times before things are in KO range from hyper beam or blizzard or whatever.

Agility + wrap is irrelevant to me idk why people always think THAT'S what's so bad when it's plenty easy to just paralyze things and slowly take them down.

The thing that puts wrap way over the top is the switching control that you get from it. If you wrap something, you get a free switch if I don't switch. This makes predictions really easy and free for setting yourself up for advantageous matchups. Even Gengar can't attack if wrap "hits" it.

All that on top of the fact that general chip damage is extremely impactful on rby battles. It's a way way overpowered move.

[t3h Icy]

Not to mention from a less competitive perspective, but just an entertainment one, Wrapping is really boring.

[Destiny Warrior]

When Nite comes in on an OU mon, how can the OU mon respond?

Alakazam - Thunder Wave. Improves your odds of getting an Ice Beam/Blizzard in from Chansey/Jynx/Articuno/Starmie later.
Articuno - lolwut. Blizzard.
Chansey - Thunder Wave/Ice Beam if it is weakened. Ice Beam does 287 - 337, so while it doesn't OHKO, you will still punish it hard.
Exeggutor - Sleep Powder/Stun Spore. You're slower than Nite, so the Agility boost does not cancel out paralysis. Then go to say Chansey, and commence the war.
Gengar - I'll give you this matchup, but Gar is kind of unpopular anyway.
Golem - Rock Slide. You'll not OHKO, but you have a decent chance of 2hkoing. ALternatively, do what I do and run Blizzard Rhydon
Jolteon - Thunder Wave, go to Chansey.
Jynx - Blizzard it.
Lapras - Blizzard again.
Persian - I haven't seen very much of Persian, so idk what really to do with it. I'll give you this one.
Rhydon - BLIZZARD RHYDON Use Rock Slide.
Slowbro - Not sure on this, but you could maybe set up Reflect to improve your chances?
Snorlax - Fishing for paralysis, and then using Hyper Beam looks ok.
Starmie - Blizzard.
Tauros - Refer Starmie.
Zapdos - Never seen a Zap before, so I have to reserve my judgement on it.

Also, not everyone on Smogon uses Wrap. I just played my tourney match(1-2, 3rd match went down to the wire after my ALAKAZAM SWEEP midgame killing Eggy, Starmie and Tauros *cue Garrin setting off fireworks), and didn't encounter Wrap. Quite a few people just don't feel comfortable with the Wrapping strategy, because it's really luck reliant(you are not, I repeat, are NOT going to be Wrapping your way through 5-6 mons).

[WaterWizard]

Gengar ?

[Destiny Warrior]

Gengar - I'll give you this matchup, but Gar is kind of unpopular anyway.

I'm not sure what to do with Gengar really.

[Nerd]

Wrap is boring, overpowered, and extremely luck reliant so it should definitely be banned.

Don't forget that wrap is actually more broken in link battles; poison damage occurs every turn of wrap. Expect even more gayness if this is 'fixed' in Pokemon Online.

[Destiny Warrior]

I'm not saying Wrap should be unbanned, just pointing out what OUs can potentially do to mess up AgiliWrapNite.

[hipmonlee]

Do you guys know if the whole 37.5% chance of 2 turns, 37.5% chance of 3 turns, 12.5% chance of 4 turns, 12.5% chance of 5 turns is properly implemented in NB?

Wrap is arguably better in carts than on nb, but it certainly has nothing at all to do with poison.

[jorgen]

Hip, I've wondered that myself. I've only played one or two matches with Wrap legal, but I swear to God, every single wrap was a 5-turner in those matches. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly or am just incredibly unlucky, it might be worth it to look into this.

[Destiny Warrior]

I think Wrapping moves DO seem to be programmed to be 5 turns always. I've played 5-6 matches with Wrap on, and it always seems to go for 5 turns.

Also, damage from the attack seems to change each turn, and crits are doing more damage, that shouldn't happen right? Wrapping moves should be doing constant damage in RBY right?

[t3h Icy]

Wrapping moves are 3/8, 3/8, 1/8, 1/8 I believe. Either you're really unlucky, or the percentages are wrong on NBS. In that case, I'd guess 1/4, 1/4, 1/4, 1/4, but I'm not sure.

May 20, 2011 5:01:24 GMT -8 Destiny Warrior said:

Also, damage from the attack seems to change each turn, and crits are doing more damage, that shouldn't happen right? Wrapping moves should be doing constant damage in RBY right?

On Stadium, only the first hit sets the damage and if it CHs, while following wraps do the same. I'm not sure about in-game, but I think it can vary like on NBS.

[jorgen]

@icy: I dunno about damage-setting, but as far as CHes, Wrap has that same property in-game. As do all multi-hit attacks.

[pocket]

May 19, 2011 12:05:08 GMT -8 Nitro said:

It's easily bannable to me. 85% accuracy is very accurate when you only really need it to hit 3-4 times before things are in KO range from hyper beam or blizzard or whatever.

Agility + wrap is irrelevant to me idk why people always think THAT'S what's so bad when it's plenty easy to just paralyze things and slowly take them down.

The thing that puts wrap way over the top is the switching control that you get from it. If you wrap something, you get a free switch if I don't switch. This makes predictions really easy and free for setting yourself up for advantageous matchups. Even Gengar can't attack if wrap "hits" it.

All that on top of the fact that general chip damage is extremely impactful on rby battles. It's a way way overpowered move.

Wow, I did not realize that there was a Wrap argument going on these past few days :x

It arguably has some amazing perks to it, such as the switching control, which may provide the team with Wrap some advantage over a bog-standard Tauros-Chansey-Eggy-Snorlax-Alakazam team. Not really.

However, we can always switch out of Wrap, and the opponent can only use Wrap or switch out - We know that if a Victreebel is wrapping our Chansey, it won't throw a Stun Spore at our Alakazam / Gengar when we switch out. I think the fact that we still have control even while being wrapped makes it not broken / overpowered. Now if our Pokemon was not only immobolized by Wrap, but was also unable to switch, now that's undisputedly broken, too luck-oriented, and should be banned immediately.

The truth is, a standard-rby team has all the utility to deal with Wrappers (even Agility Nite). The biggest weakness of Wrappers are that they are rendered virtually useless when they are paralyzed. And most rby teams have at least 2 T-Wave / Stun Spore and even more paralysis through Body Slams. Plus, another weakness is that they are not terribly fast, and they need to be faster than our Pokemon in order to be effective. OU mons, such as Starmie, Alakazam, Tauros, and Gengar terrorize these monsters all day. I agree with Borat's sentiment on bans: for anything to be even considered semi-bannable, it needs to force players to use more gimmicky, less OU monsters just to counter the new threat. That is why he believes HP Zapdos / Raikou should be unbanned, because their counters (Snorlax, Blissey, and Raikou) are all OU anyways. Celebi in the other hand, should stay banned, because it provides unprecedented defensive and supportive coverage that would force teams to use shit like HP Bug Rhydon.

Wrap is certainly annoying, but it is by no means luck-oriented (bring in a faster Pokemon). The users also have many weaknesses that one can capitalize on (boltbeam weak, no recovery, not particularly fast) and the move itself have some intrinsic characteristic that can be exploited (INACCURATE / wrap forces that Pokemon to use Wrap until the duration ends; cannot switch moves). Again, Agility Nite is really the only controversial candidate for being banned, because Agility resolves many of the problems with Wrappers (now Dragonite is faster than anyone) - Agility Nite IS heavily luck-oriented (we can only hit it when Wrap misses). Otherwise, Wrap has not really made a revolutionary shift in RBY metagame that has forced people to use gimmicky and more situational monsters, and imo only helped to diversify the relatively static OU metagame.

[Crystal_]

DNite comes into something that doesn't TW and uses Agility, then good luck. Others are still ok imo, just different meta, but they aren't luck based at all.
The main concern is that there is not enough rby people for 2 different metas; when I play on Netbattle I don't know if I could be facing a wrapper, and I usually assume there isn't one due to RBY2k10 influence, then I often get raped by a Wrap/Spin/Clamp that never misses.

[Nitro]

No offense Pocket but what you're saying is terribly wrong in a lot of ways. I'm in control while being wrapped? Right...

I don't even want to get into it because it's a debate that is going nowhere but I just want to say that usually I think 2k10 is retarded and smogon is right but in this case smogon is very wrong and it's a shame.

Wrap certainly changes the RBY metagame as Lax/Chansey/Egg shift from being unquestionably top 4 pokemon to being borderline top 10.

In fact, I think wrap opens the door for a huge shift, a potentially really stally metagame for RBY. All you have to do to beat wrappers is paralyze them? What if I use rest? How do you punish rest in rby? With Tauros? Too bad everyone will have Cloyster now, oh, and that thing has clamp and rest too. Rape.

What better way to combat chip damage than by putting rest on everything, including your own wrappers? Quite frankly smogon was never very good at RBY as most of their good player are post-RBY era players and this whole wrap being legal was established well after RBY was sort of abandoned for all intents and purposes. The pro-wrap arguments are extremely simplistic (it can miss, all you need is par and wrappers are useless, etc) because the wrap meta has never been played super competitively regularly, the way 2K10 players play regularly now. This results in all the arguments for wrap being based on a broken meta where some players are using wrap and others are building teams for non-wrap games.

If you had a parallel community of RBY players playing RBY regularly the way 2K10 does, only with wrap instead of without, I guarantee their meta would end up looking much different. If you can't see that I don't think you have much vision for the game.

[Chase]

Uh, I'm in this tournament and i won round1

good luck to others

[pocket]

Awesome, Chase!

I see your side of things Nitro. Yes, the metagame WILL change, with an increase in usage of BL pokemon, such as Dragonite, Victreebel, Tangela, somewhat Cloyster (pretty OU), as well as an initial boost in usage of things like Gengar (until we learn how to play around Wrap). Perhaps we may see things such as Rest Hypno rise in usage and such. There will undoubtedly be a major change in metagame.

Does that prevent a non-Wrap OU team that we've been using to be at a disadvantage? I say, no, cuz the opposing Wrap team loses out on the offensive and defensive advantages of the OU mons. Eggy will still be a tank that hits hard, can sleep something, and explode. That is still good. However, its dominance over RBY metagame may be diminished due to Wrappers, but is that a bad thing? We might need to change our tactics a little, such as not getting Alakazam paralyzed so readily. We may want Gengar to be active longer. Is that a bad thing? It is certainly awkward at first, but with familiarity comes with finesse that is required to deal with Wrappers.

And that is what I feel is lacking. We do not have sufficient experience like we have experience for the non-Wrap metagame. We do not know how to deal with the strategy. Until we truly develop a metagame with Wrap, try everything, and still conclude that Wrap has resulted in an "unhealthy, disruptive" metagame, then only then can we truly justify the banning of wrap.

And Smogon did have a relatively active RBY metagame pre-DP generation, due to Smogon Tours including RBY, and we also had huge debates about Wrap (usually due to Agility Dragonite). We concluded that Wrap should stay. Other than Agility Nite, I do not recall Wrap having a bad impact on the game. I believe we are blowing Wrap out of proportions, because we lack the practical playing experience. Once you battle with Wrap teams, you find out that it's not that bad. In fact, being overly reliant on Wrap usually leads to inconsistent results and not that effective overall.

[Isa]

The "Wrapping is boring" argument is in fact very valid. If you want the community to grow, wrapping a newcomer is a sure way to scare him off. Yes, not everyone thinks Wrap is boring (but to the ones proposing it, do you enjoy using that move? Seriously?), but I can promise you that a majority does. With the community for RBY being as small as it is, wasting potential players on allowing Wrap simply can't be afforded. I know for a fact that I hadn't stayed for very long if Icy had started to Wrap me in my introductory battles.

Regardless of what good wrapping may or may not do for the metagame, it is certainly not appealing, and should therefore be banned without hesitation.

[WaterWizard]

Wrapping detracts from the enjoyment of the game. It reduces the metagame to chance. Switch Dragonite in on Hyperbeam, a frozen/sleeping pokemon, or anyone without a paralyzing move (Twave/Bslam), and use Agility. Game over.

The fact is, wrap isn't supposed to function the way it does. It was a horrendous glitch. You remember surfing to Cinnabar island and crying as your team was slowly destroyed by Tentacools? No one wants to waste their free time sitting around waiting for your Agile Dragonite or SD Tentacruel to miss. It's simply not a fun or healthy metagame.

[pocket]

I'm not too confident if one can call it a glitch. I mean, doesn't Wrap also have the same effect in Stadium?

Boring or not boring is subjective, man. I personally get an adrenaline rush when I'm fighting against Wrappers, because it takes some maneuvering to regulate damage control and counter Wrappers. It is definitely not a strategy easy to grasp by beginners, but definitely shouldn't repel new players if presented properly (I mean with all of this Wrap-hate vibe, of course the beginners would not want to bother with it).
What's boring is waiting to get swept by a BP-Chain Team in Advance, as they just stack up boosts and we can't do shit about it.

And yes, Agility Nite is probably the only overpowered Wrap user in RBY; no denying that. I am still not bought that it is "unhealthy" for the metagame, since we haven't even really delved into it, and shunned it instead. It would be interesting to see an rby metagame that allowed Wrap moves, but not in conjunction with Agility, and see how it fares. Such an environment is unprecedented, since Wrap usually came with Agility Nite and Agility Moltres, and it may actually be better than people theorymon.

[Crystal_]

Not more than 5 people knows/cares about this discussion, so chances are this just goes to nowhere and dies over time. There has been an insanely long debate about Wrap, without a position clearly surpassing the other, and all possible arguments (that are inevitably opinions, like at every other ban have been) already made. I do (not) like it, it's (not) boring, it's (not) overpowered, it's good/bad for the meta etc are too subjective arguments, so even if we manage to gather all people that plays rby, there is now way we come to an agreement.


Lastly, adding intermediate options like banning wrap dnite alone, or dnite and moltres, isn't a good idea imo, since we are creating more possible metas, and then, everyone will be playing "his" rby.