I think that's huge. The two finalists agreeing to their own wager match. Who could tell them otherwise? The losers? That's so exciting. I did something similar awhile ago in a room tour where my friend and I agreed to randomize our teams for the finals. It was hilarious.
The way I look at it, they can't agree to say allow 1 uber Pokémon each, as that breaks the rules. They played within the rules, making a gentleman's agreement, which if either had backed out of, their opponent could do nothing about. A class act from both players.
Toxic spikes being removed on switch by certain Pokémon is a great mechanic that would be interesting in theory land to apply to other hazards. Although when thinking of Pokémon that would make sense to pick up spikes, the first that comes to mind is magneton…
i've thought that rocks should work this way for a long time. i dunno about spikes - i guess you could make them do ground type damage and then make ground types pick them up, but that's a pretty massive change. in my head it's also accompanied by ice gaining a ground resistance
It's honestly great to me that this happened. Since they knew it was such a hyped battle, they decided to make it soul-crushingly disappointing and boring. Two people that ruined a potential masterpiece for a collective group of hundreds will always have my respect!
the joke can be fine. the problem is some people couldn't tell joking remark from serious comment, and they would actually develop a value system with little compassion and derive joy from harming or insulting others.
I guess I'm probably missing quite a lot of the context here, since I wasn't around. Obviously there was a larger discussion about whether or not spikes should be banned which I can't comment on. But just talking about the one finals match between these two players, I genuinely can't fathom being upset that the two made a gentlemans agreement to ban spikes. Like, this sort of thing is what makes competitive scenes interesting. Was it the same as proper ADVOU? No, but you still have plenty of other matches to play/watch if you want the 'proper' experience. Could one of them have broken the agreement? Yes, and taken a hit to their reputation, but that's the risk both decided to take. Is this unique little wrinkle in history worth whatever other bullshit surrounded it? Yes. Because that's why these scenes are interesting.
I guess some people are just not moved or affected by protests. In chess, Hikaru recently drew against Magnus with a double bongcloud opening and there was some backlash to that as well. I think that as an observer, it's easy to get caught in the sanctity of your sport but as the player yourself, it's just another day at the office so to speak, and it's fun to mix things up a bit.
That was 2 years ago, lol not recently. Plus, it wasn't premeditated agreement, they played the bongcloud because there were a lot of quick draws in the tournament and Magnus said in an interview afterwards that there are other ways to repeat moves besides playing known draws and agreeing to a draw 10 moves in. That was nothing like this lol
@@CastroMKE Good point. Also, they were playing over the board, not in an online simulator, and also, when Hikaru played Magnus, Kyurem was still playable in OU, which they could have used to their advantage. The joke I'm making is that any analogy falls apart when you dissect it, but that's not the fault of the analogy, it just signals that you didn't understand its message. In this case, the message was that both our SPL finalists and our grandmasters faced backlash for not taking the game seriously in those instances. This backlash was unjustified in my opinion, and was perpetrated by elitists.
Rocks are definitely worse than Spikes. The problem, I think, is the relative ease with which Skarmory can set them up. If your opponent doesn't have a Magneton, your Skarmory can get Spikes up fairly easily, since very few Pokémon can really hit it hard right off the bat and most of those that can are always really obvious (Zapdos, Jolteon & Gengar, for example). I don't mind Skarmory at this point. As long as Magneton is allowed, using Skarmory will always be risky to some extent. If trapping ever gets banned, then we definitely have a problem.
Pretty sure these "gentlemen agreements" are a bannable offense in some pro game leagues, due to it being players colluding with eachother. Mostly due to sold matches, which isn't the case here, but also to avoid "protest matches" and other shenanigans. Still, it's almost always super interesting when it happens.
It's a shame that that's the case, really, gentleman's agreements matches (e.g. both playing a low tier in Smash) are great the vast majority of the time. Something like the Bayonetta duo 'protest match' absolutely doesn't count as a gentleman's agreement.
There are plenty of gentlemen’s agreements in E sports, rainbow 6 for example when an operator had a really broken face shield on their gun in a 1 shot headshot game, the pro community at the time made a gentlemen’s agreement to not use that operator, as he could rappel on a window and never die while holding the bomb-site, essentially making post-plant impossible for the defenders to retake the bomb-site and win the round, now that doesn’t directly compare to Pokémon in any way of course, but if you are playing ADV OU and you trap your opponents skarmory with magneton for example and you get up more spikes than your opponent and their spiker is dead, unless you have a generally bad team/matchup more layers of spikes will almost always result in the person with more hazards winning. So I doubt they would get banned for something like this, especially since showdown tours aren’t exactly spectated by thousands nor streamed anywhere.
As someone who disliked how gen8 revolved around boots, I feel that hazards are important to force progress, as without them, it's difficult for many offensive mons to break holes into a good defensive cores. Boots gave rise to boots+regen+recover bulky balance, with knock off as one of the main ways to forcing progress. while I don't have experience in older metagames and mainly get information on tournament games and your videos, a hazardless metagame would have bulky balance + stall teams constraining the metagame, as there doesn't seem to have a lot of the same options that later metagames have to bust through strong defensive cores (Z moves, megas, high powered stabs like CC, etc). That said, boom is amazing and an important tool allows Gen2 to not revolve around stall, but spikes are integral for offense to make progress there. Regardless, I can't see the removal of spikes be anything but a negative for gen3, as it's such an important tool to make progress.
I disagree. I'd say that gen 8 would have been stally even without boots, since recovery was at 16 pp, better defensive mons like Corv were introduced, regenerator mons werent dexitted, and dyna-maxing was too unbalanced for competitive play. Imo the current gen would be too offensive and fast paced without boots. For example, Gen 9 pu rn is so hazard focused, as there are hardly any good spinners or defoggers except quaxwell. Without boots there would be close to no counterplay except for using quaxwell or some c-tier Mon to deal with hazards.
tbh, thats a case against hazards, boots are a reaction to hazards, just cuz 90% of teams ran AV Ttar when Naga was around doesnt mean AV Ttar is busted, everything wanting to run boots enabled defense more, cuz defense doesnt need strong offensive items like choice band/specs
@@snacktimeforme7086 No boots had a really big impact on the metagame. Eviolite chansey who has superior bulk the blissey fell to uu because blissey ignoring hazards made its actual hit taking ability superior. Rock resists like gastrodon and hippowdon even started running boots to ignore haxarads. Being able to ingore haxards made it really difficult for offensive teams to break many defensive cores which made forcing progress really difficult against such teams. Knock was therefore really key and any mon that learned that move basically started running it. FIni, pex and ferro who would prefer using some other move over it started running it for its utility. Many players even considered them to be broken.
@@mrschrubelhupfyay6397 i would argue hazards are healthy and circumventing them so easily is a bit too much. especially with regenerator, you take the hit force the switch and without taking any chip you basically took no damage that turn.
i guess it was a coincidence that neither brought ttar as well, but i find adv games with neither spikes nor sand incredibly boring. i think it's a metagame that benefits a lot from the forced progress that they offer. this game could have dragged on incredibly long if mcmeghan played more carefully with his pert. frankly idk how they said they had fun with this lol
Right, that game was sleep-inducing to watch. As a new ADV player, I learned from the start how defining spikes are to the metagame. The viability of so many Pokémon (Jolteon, Aerodactyl, Claydol, Gengar) are directly tied to their relationship with spikes. It would not be ADV without them and so I don’t understand why players like this are even heard out for their opinions.
The reason why spikes are used more then spikeless is because spikeless styles are not good at being good. Alot of them are bad (which you yourself have covered) even the more specific more consistent spikeless styles have trouble dealing with specific stuff often which ironically iis often its own tactics. They are also far easier to counter team because of it and they will loose to dumb stuff that is very embarrassing to loose to. (Duel Blob, Reversal Stuff, You are more susceptible to hax because spikeless stuff are almost always offensive so secondary effects can be very disastrous.)
Why is spikes good? 2 reasons. Passive damage eventually does more damage than any one pokemon can usually muster. Secondly, defense requires careful planning to stay safe and force switches which punishes players who are too aggressive. It is like peanut butter and jelly
I find it weird how much the discussion of skarmory and spikes in this video mirrors some of my recent thoughts on gen 8 uu, where I consider skarm to be the second best pokemon of the tier, basically because spikes are really good, and skarm also has great defensive utility. The ability for what should be a very passive wall to gain momentum with spikes and enable its teammates offense is just incredibly valuable. The difference is there's no way you could argue spikes are broken in gen 8 uu, but I think its possible that the same is true here. Ultimately the worst part of building in gen 8 uu, even with some of the incredibly restrictive offensive threats, is having a plan to deal with spikes. You pretty much need hazard removal on most teams and there aren't that many options. A lot of the options that do exist still kinda need to be paired with mons that shit on common spikes structures (celesteela and taunt chandelure being a couple of examples). Of course in adv the removal options are more limited/worse and there's no boots, but also skarm doesn't get roost and magneton exists and there's no rocks. As incredibly frustrating as it is to plan for spikes sometimes, there are other really restrictive elements in most metagames, and idk how much getting rid of spikes actually "fixes" many of these metagames. Rocks on the other hand...
Hoenn Gaiden and adv as a whole alongside gsc boom offense teams have made me apreciate hazards, but I think stealth rocks IS uncompetitive, because you can't be immune to them, which is something unique to it. New entry hazard effects would be very cool as long as there is a type or something immune to It. Like idk, an entry hazard that paralyses on entry but ground and limber mons are immune to it and electrics remove them. Just throwing ideas
TBH, I think more games would see Pokemon of lower tiers or usage would be used in Hazard-less free metas, as you'd need less definitive switch-in for certain Pokes, and the ones who are used for switches because of bulk would see the sort of niche counters come in to deal, rather than a Pokemon's usage being based (in part) on how well it can deal with Hazards repeatedly before it can even get an attack off.
I'm not a fan of entry hazards (or passive damage and passive recovery in general) but I've never felt like they are the be all end all winning condition of every game (it's not like they are doing 50% damage after one setup turn just for being an unfortunate type combination), just another pillar of the metagame. You have tools to deal with them, both in team composition, moves and abilities, and on the spiking side it's such a commitment getting to three layers, especially when layer 2 giving so little value compared to 1. Good thing gen 1 doesn't have them, we only have to deal with those degenerate partial trapping users
so i come bearing an example of this kind of thing happening in another competitive game entirely. in the realm of top yugioh, many formats are extremely skill intensive and interactive except for one card, but this card is a huge factor in the power of the top deck(s). most notably this happened with vanity’s emptiness and djinn, releaser of rituals. because of how sacky (think “haxy” in pokémon terms) these cards can be, and how much they linearize the format, players like patrick hoban would reveal they were siding out their copies of vanity’s and djinn face up (imagine revealing your lax set in gen 2 ou between games 1 and 2) as a way to propose a gentleman’s agreement to remove the card. in general this was extremely successful ok his part, as these formats were often tested or played without these sacky cards to accentuate the skill expression of the format even at the time, however hoban reveals in his book that and angle shot he developed but never used where one would side out their copies of these sacky cards face up, then immediately secretly readd them to their deck to play game 2 at a significant advantage, was used by various top players during such formats. yugioh’s code of conduct does cover for situations like this, as dishonesty of this style is generally banned under player behavior clauses, but it goes to show that gentlemen’s agreements only work when the would actually have the integrity to back it up
I've played yugioh but never gotten to a point where I would identify meaningful skill nor interactions, like it all looks like auto pilot engines to me. Are there any resources or game analyses out there you would recommend?
@@tuberialolicon-tanuki6533 all I can really recommend is looking at what top players are putting out on yt. guys like pak, Jessie kotton, n3sh, Joshua Schmidt, bohdan temnyk are all good places to look. its also impossible not to recommend the aforementioned road of the king by patrick hoban. its the seminal text on the sorta philosophy of top yugioh. sadly ygo lacks the wealth of historical resources that games like magic have. theres not really a “who’s the beatdown” or “control player’s bible”
I see nothing wrong with two players at the top of a tournament agreeing to their own rules as long as no actual tier rules are broken. I honestly don’t think anyone even has a right to complain about it.
as someone who loves gen 8, i don't know if hazards are broken. however, gen 8 definitely has hazards not being broken - particularly recently theres some teams that simply do not have defog or do not have hazards due to the prevalence of hdb making both less needed, which I think is very interesting & opens up a lot of novel paths for teambuilding.
I *hate* Spikes and entry hazards, but even as someone who runs Spikeless strats a lot in the tier I don't mind them too much (at least when I can force the player to not be able to get all 3 layers down). If they set up all three layers of Spikes, then that's on me for not pressuring Skarmory/Forretress/Cloyster enough. I can see an argument for 3 layers being too much, but then you have to wonder if it's too much just for Gen 3 OU or for the future gens as well (at least the ones without Boots)? As for the Gentleman's agreement, it's fine in theory but then that leading to them going stall-heavy because of it was disappointing. Mostly because stall is just not fun to watch as a spectator.
If I cared back then probably be angry. Its a bit unsportsmanlike to other players of the tournament. But in hindsight was cool that it happened so we get a what if spikes was banned video from bkc
IMO the gen 8 metagame is the ideal balance of hazards. Boots provided a lot more wiggle room against hazards, while knock off eliminates the immunity in long run.
I'm nobody but I really don't think that Skarm is the best ADV Mon. It's great, Spikes are great, but Skarm is truly an unsplashable Mon. If you're gonna use it, you need to completely build around it, because it becomes extremely exploitable and nearly useless without support. You need to fit mons that abuse spikes, mons that beat the spike immunes, and mons that can cover Skarm's ass with its passivity and exploitable matchups. Tar, on the other hand, is still #1 in my mind because not only is sand an automatic and reliable source of passive damage, but it's also a very capable, splashable, versatile, and threatening force in its own right. Virtually no team would suffer from Tar's inclusion, but Skarmory seriously constrains the structure of any team it's included on. tl;dr TTar is still the top dog because it can be the first or last consideration on a team, whereas Skarm is very needy and always necessitates being the first consideration in teambuilding.
Hazards are a necessary evil. Even if they’re flawed the ability of stall being too powerful does just kill enjoyment for me an others on a viewing level as well. Offense vs stall can be interesting to watch but stall vs stall is just the worst. Especially ADV no spikes sounds extra nightmarish with 32 pp recover…
Seeing how popular boots are since they exist, there might be some problems around hazards. That said, im not sure just banning them would make anything better. I can imagine 100's of ways to nerf entry hazards, and each of them would have to be balance tested for months and probably every one of them is bad and its not like modding the game to make it more balanced was ever an option.
I think hazards aren't that bad. I mean it's annoying to face the same teams over and over, and it gets old when all of your opponents are trying to execute the same game plan. But on the other hand, it's a part of the game, and if your team is so easily exploitable, vulnerable and can't deal with a move like spike, or toxic, or twave, etc, then reality is your team simply can't be the best team. I do hate skarmory and blissey though, ngl. Mostly because I'm a setup sweeper type player and getting toxiced and infinitely stalled out is probably the most frustrating defeat I could have.
I think no spikes or sand in gen 3 would be detrimental to the meta. There's not enough power in this gen, if we allowed this then the game would just be swamped with stall or set up mons with boosting berries. This forces progress especially in a relatively underpowered gen. I understand that it's centralizing and annoying but the games would just be too long on top of being boring. It encourages you to plan beforehand and adapt on the fly hence the allowance of trapping in this gen which is a symptom again of the underpowered nature of this meta
I wish all competitive games had a rule that if 2 players agree to it they can do literally anything. Imagine a pokémon tournament where they just decide to play Melee in the finals instead 😈
I would say, that spikes are a nececary evil in almost every gen of pokemon. Cause without them everything goes down hill. Just imagin regenerator stall teams without spikes to keep them in check... its nightmarefuel. There would be no way to make progress. However, i would say that in gen 3 spikes are in a spot between balanced and not usefull at all. They are very easy to remove, as claydoll is an absolute powerhouse in gen 3 and skarm gets destroyed by magneton, meaning that its far easyer to match the oppents spikes with your own and there is the option to build a team fully imune to them. Hance a spot between balanced and not usefull at all. The far more powerfull tool in gen 3 is sand in my opinion. Any good gen 3 team needs to either have a ttar of its own, or needs to be able to abuse the sand set by the opponents ttar and good ways to out it.
What do I hate about singles? no item clause a world with ONE heavy duty boots as opposed to 3+ a team would be very interesting in my opinion, but maybe I'm just recreating gen 6/7.
I'm fine with Skarmory, Fortress and such plus their players but Spikes sucks lol. I like it that neither brought Spikes. I think it was a great move and you guys should've tried banning it and unbanning later to follow suit if anything If Sand is your claim, ban sand too and unban if it wasn't the issue
Spikes are just so effective that they're frustrating. People use spikes and are so dedicated to getting all three layers, it feels separate from the rest of the mind games. I respect the progress they make and how they make for faster play, but I wish rapid spin was better. Spikes go up when someone uses protect, rapid spin should do the same and get rid of spikes on a protect. I get ghosts blocking it, but the inverse protect rules have always been weird to me. Also, TTar not only halts lax's and cune's dominance, but he warps the tier into favoring sand immunes. That's interesting. He doesn't have the Sp Def boost here, his counter play can be achieved in a ton of ways, with a random fighting/water/ground coverage move on a non-stab mon. It is much more difficult to beat skarm/bliss with non-stab coverage, and if you don't have dug/mag, both frail mons, skarmory and blissey are very free to switch out until it's the last mon. Unless you're also bringing spikes and applying offensive pressure that way to blissey. Which comes back around and feels limiting because it's so effective. Also, f gengar
I’m confused as to how these 2 players were considered great ADV players? I’m admittedly new to ADV and know nothing on its history but even I know how central spikes are to the tier. Literally nothing about the metagame would be the same without them. So I don’t see how you can be considered a great ADV player and be so opposed to their existence. Removing them would result in an unrecognizable metagame going against everything ADV has evolved into for the past 2 decades. Not to mention that match was probably the most boring ADV game I’ve ever watched since the absence of spikes turns it into a stall-war where there is little to no pressure that can be applied to defensive Pokémon.
Did you hear the video ? They wanted to make a statement. As for their background, Mcmeghan and Ojama are considered to be top 5 players of all time, not only in ADV but throughout every generations. Mcmeghan also has the best record of this year SPL in ADV, believe me they know what they are doing.
Well even the greats can get blind sided and be "lost in the sauce" sometimes. It doesn't feel good when you want to optimize something new, but constantly run into the same dead end (spikes in this case). Even BKC mentions how frustrated/annoyed he get at times when confronting the restrictiveness of spikes/hazards. Maybe a bad day/seed of doubt was planted at the right time and you're down the rabbit hole for longer than you should.
Spikes are both annoying and boring. They make boring teams and boring battles. Rocks are even worse. Entry hazards in general are just terrible for the game. It's already enough of a potential hazard just to switch out a pokemon depending on if it's a good or bad read. I just think adding an additional limitation(and one that's much more limited for removal compared to things like status or weather which have more options to get around) makes the game more standardized and predictable....which is boring.
I'm glad they played without Spikes, because I hate Skarmory and I think people who use it should burn in hell.
yeah no its a disgrace to this game
and it's all that other stuff
yeah i kinda can't believe they did that
Couldn’t have said it better myself
I will remember this.
I think that's huge. The two finalists agreeing to their own wager match. Who could tell them otherwise? The losers? That's so exciting. I did something similar awhile ago in a room tour where my friend and I agreed to randomize our teams for the finals. It was hilarious.
- sees ADV
- sees Porygon2 and Vaporeon in the thumbnail
Oh baby, we’re in for a good one.
The way I look at it, they can't agree to say allow 1 uber Pokémon each, as that breaks the rules.
They played within the rules, making a gentleman's agreement, which if either had backed out of, their opponent could do nothing about.
A class act from both players.
I guess you could say, they were two all great time players who played by their own rules in a tournament final
that's definitely one way of putting it
Truly a moment in time
One of the tournaments of all time for shizzle
many are saying this…
maybe the two all time greats played their own rules in a tournament were the friends we made along thee way
Holy fuck I just realized this was the same year as the Mazar scandal. Jfc this SPL was SO scuffed goddamn.
No spikes, no sand, setup wars only adv OU
Toxic spikes being removed on switch by certain Pokémon is a great mechanic that would be interesting in theory land to apply to other hazards. Although when thinking of Pokémon that would make sense to pick up spikes, the first that comes to mind is magneton…
Bug types removing sticky web or maybe rock types removing rocks could be cool. Removing spikes as a type feature is harder to justify
i've thought that rocks should work this way for a long time. i dunno about spikes - i guess you could make them do ground type damage and then make ground types pick them up, but that's a pretty massive change. in my head it's also accompanied by ice gaining a ground resistance
It's honestly great to me that this happened. Since they knew it was such a hyped battle, they decided to make it soul-crushingly disappointing and boring. Two people that ruined a potential masterpiece for a collective group of hundreds will always have my respect!
the joke can be fine. the problem is some people couldn't tell joking remark from serious comment, and they would actually develop a value system with little compassion and derive joy from harming or insulting others.
I would love to see a video on 'What if Close Combat existed in Gene 3 OU,' because i think it would be both funky and groovy
Tyranitar would be absolutely dogged on by the most random of mons, it would be hilarious
Seconded
fuck Close Combat honestly
@@megatennepster3833 Tar low tier??? 🤔
I guess I'm probably missing quite a lot of the context here, since I wasn't around. Obviously there was a larger discussion about whether or not spikes should be banned which I can't comment on. But just talking about the one finals match between these two players, I genuinely can't fathom being upset that the two made a gentlemans agreement to ban spikes. Like, this sort of thing is what makes competitive scenes interesting.
Was it the same as proper ADVOU? No, but you still have plenty of other matches to play/watch if you want the 'proper' experience. Could one of them have broken the agreement? Yes, and taken a hit to their reputation, but that's the risk both decided to take. Is this unique little wrinkle in history worth whatever other bullshit surrounded it? Yes. Because that's why these scenes are interesting.
I guess some people are just not moved or affected by protests. In chess, Hikaru recently drew against Magnus with a double bongcloud opening and there was some backlash to that as well. I think that as an observer, it's easy to get caught in the sanctity of your sport but as the player yourself, it's just another day at the office so to speak, and it's fun to mix things up a bit.
That was 2 years ago, lol not recently. Plus, it wasn't premeditated agreement, they played the bongcloud because there were a lot of quick draws in the tournament and Magnus said in an interview afterwards that there are other ways to repeat moves besides playing known draws and agreeing to a draw 10 moves in. That was nothing like this lol
Plus they already qualified to move on to the next round so they just played a quick draw last round. There was no incentive to win.
@@CastroMKE Good point. Also, they were playing over the board, not in an online simulator, and also, when Hikaru played Magnus, Kyurem was still playable in OU, which they could have used to their advantage.
The joke I'm making is that any analogy falls apart when you dissect it, but that's not the fault of the analogy, it just signals that you didn't understand its message. In this case, the message was that both our SPL finalists and our grandmasters faced backlash for not taking the game seriously in those instances. This backlash was unjustified in my opinion, and was perpetrated by elitists.
Rocks are definitely worse than Spikes. The problem, I think, is the relative ease with which Skarmory can set them up. If your opponent doesn't have a Magneton, your Skarmory can get Spikes up fairly easily, since very few Pokémon can really hit it hard right off the bat and most of those that can are always really obvious (Zapdos, Jolteon & Gengar, for example).
I don't mind Skarmory at this point. As long as Magneton is allowed, using Skarmory will always be risky to some extent. If trapping ever gets banned, then we definitely have a problem.
Ojama and Jabba fuse to make the ultimate player: Ojabba!
Pretty sure these "gentlemen agreements" are a bannable offense in some pro game leagues, due to it being players colluding with eachother. Mostly due to sold matches, which isn't the case here, but also to avoid "protest matches" and other shenanigans.
Still, it's almost always super interesting when it happens.
It's a shame that that's the case, really, gentleman's agreements matches (e.g. both playing a low tier in Smash) are great the vast majority of the time. Something like the Bayonetta duo 'protest match' absolutely doesn't count as a gentleman's agreement.
There are plenty of gentlemen’s agreements in E sports, rainbow 6 for example when an operator had a really broken face shield on their gun in a 1 shot headshot game, the pro community at the time made a gentlemen’s agreement to not use that operator, as he could rappel on a window and never die while holding the bomb-site, essentially making post-plant impossible for the defenders to retake the bomb-site and win the round, now that doesn’t directly compare to Pokémon in any way of course, but if you are playing ADV OU and you trap your opponents skarmory with magneton for example and you get up more spikes than your opponent and their spiker is dead, unless you have a generally bad team/matchup more layers of spikes will almost always result in the person with more hazards winning. So I doubt they would get banned for something like this, especially since showdown tours aren’t exactly spectated by thousands nor streamed anywhere.
Counter-strike pro players did this for like, years lol
A protest game being a Bannable Offence?
I smell a ton of issues with this.
As someone who disliked how gen8 revolved around boots, I feel that hazards are important to force progress, as without them, it's difficult for many offensive mons to break holes into a good defensive cores. Boots gave rise to boots+regen+recover bulky balance, with knock off as one of the main ways to forcing progress. while I don't have experience in older metagames and mainly get information on tournament games and your videos, a hazardless metagame would have bulky balance + stall teams constraining the metagame, as there doesn't seem to have a lot of the same options that later metagames have to bust through strong defensive cores (Z moves, megas, high powered stabs like CC, etc). That said, boom is amazing and an important tool allows Gen2 to not revolve around stall, but spikes are integral for offense to make progress there. Regardless, I can't see the removal of spikes be anything but a negative for gen3, as it's such an important tool to make progress.
Basically this
I disagree. I'd say that gen 8 would have been stally even without boots, since recovery was at 16 pp, better defensive mons like Corv were introduced, regenerator mons werent dexitted, and dyna-maxing was too unbalanced for competitive play. Imo the current gen would be too offensive and fast paced without boots. For example, Gen 9 pu rn is so hazard focused, as there are hardly any good spinners or defoggers except quaxwell. Without boots there would be close to no counterplay except for using quaxwell or some c-tier Mon to deal with hazards.
tbh, thats a case against hazards, boots are a reaction to hazards, just cuz 90% of teams ran AV Ttar when Naga was around doesnt mean AV Ttar is busted, everything wanting to run boots enabled defense more, cuz defense doesnt need strong offensive items like choice band/specs
@@snacktimeforme7086 No boots had a really big impact on the metagame. Eviolite chansey who has superior bulk the blissey fell to uu because blissey ignoring hazards made its actual hit taking ability superior. Rock resists like gastrodon and hippowdon even started running boots to ignore haxarads. Being able to ingore haxards made it really difficult for offensive teams to break many defensive cores which made forcing progress really difficult against such teams. Knock was therefore really key and any mon that learned that move basically started running it. FIni, pex and ferro who would prefer using some other move over it started running it for its utility. Many players even considered them to be broken.
@@mrschrubelhupfyay6397 i would argue hazards are healthy and circumventing them so easily is a bit too much. especially with regenerator, you take the hit force the switch and without taking any chip you basically took no damage that turn.
bkc have you thought about making a video about the recent push to suspect test tradebacks in rby?
I'll keep my eye on it and see how it ends up!
@@BKCplaysPokemon don’t keep your eye on me BKC! (Ugly)
Tradebacks could have a permanent ladder.
your videos are always so interesting, keep it up!
i guess it was a coincidence that neither brought ttar as well, but i find adv games with neither spikes nor sand incredibly boring. i think it's a metagame that benefits a lot from the forced progress that they offer. this game could have dragged on incredibly long if mcmeghan played more carefully with his pert. frankly idk how they said they had fun with this lol
Right, that game was sleep-inducing to watch. As a new ADV player, I learned from the start how defining spikes are to the metagame. The viability of so many Pokémon (Jolteon, Aerodactyl, Claydol, Gengar) are directly tied to their relationship with spikes. It would not be ADV without them and so I don’t understand why players like this are even heard out for their opinions.
I had fun watching it
When lax unfroze to rest from the freeze was as hype a Pokémon moment as you can ask for.
The reason why spikes are used more then spikeless is because spikeless styles are not good at being good. Alot of them are bad (which you yourself have covered) even the more specific more consistent spikeless styles have trouble dealing with specific stuff often which ironically iis often its own tactics. They are also far easier to counter team because of it and they will loose to dumb stuff that is very embarrassing to loose to. (Duel Blob, Reversal Stuff, You are more susceptible to hax because spikeless stuff are almost always offensive so secondary effects can be very disastrous.)
Muppet
Why is spikes good? 2 reasons. Passive damage eventually does more damage than any one pokemon can usually muster. Secondly, defense requires careful planning to stay safe and force switches which punishes players who are too aggressive. It is like peanut butter and jelly
I don't have a problem with this. Perfectly fair if they both agree.
I find it weird how much the discussion of skarmory and spikes in this video mirrors some of my recent thoughts on gen 8 uu, where I consider skarm to be the second best pokemon of the tier, basically because spikes are really good, and skarm also has great defensive utility. The ability for what should be a very passive wall to gain momentum with spikes and enable its teammates offense is just incredibly valuable. The difference is there's no way you could argue spikes are broken in gen 8 uu, but I think its possible that the same is true here. Ultimately the worst part of building in gen 8 uu, even with some of the incredibly restrictive offensive threats, is having a plan to deal with spikes. You pretty much need hazard removal on most teams and there aren't that many options. A lot of the options that do exist still kinda need to be paired with mons that shit on common spikes structures (celesteela and taunt chandelure being a couple of examples). Of course in adv the removal options are more limited/worse and there's no boots, but also skarm doesn't get roost and magneton exists and there's no rocks. As incredibly frustrating as it is to plan for spikes sometimes, there are other really restrictive elements in most metagames, and idk how much getting rid of spikes actually "fixes" many of these metagames. Rocks on the other hand...
Hoenn Gaiden and adv as a whole alongside gsc boom offense teams have made me apreciate hazards, but I think stealth rocks IS uncompetitive, because you can't be immune to them, which is something unique to it. New entry hazard effects would be very cool as long as there is a type or something immune to It. Like idk, an entry hazard that paralyses on entry but ground and limber mons are immune to it and electrics remove them. Just throwing ideas
only, like, 10 Pokémon are immune to rocks: Pokémon with magic guard.
Also, I don't like how Pokémon 4× weak to rock get cucked by it.
Can anyone have a gentleman’s agreement to play any of the past 4 generations without lando 😂😂 id love to see that
TBH, I think more games would see Pokemon of lower tiers or usage would be used in Hazard-less free metas, as you'd need less definitive switch-in for certain Pokes, and the ones who are used for switches because of bulk would see the sort of niche counters come in to deal, rather than a Pokemon's usage being based (in part) on how well it can deal with Hazards repeatedly before it can even get an attack off.
The thing about agreeing to their gentleman's agreement is that the one that presents it usually has a plan to beat it in advance
I'm not a fan of entry hazards (or passive damage and passive recovery in general) but I've never felt like they are the be all end all winning condition of every game (it's not like they are doing 50% damage after one setup turn just for being an unfortunate type combination), just another pillar of the metagame. You have tools to deal with them, both in team composition, moves and abilities, and on the spiking side it's such a commitment getting to three layers, especially when layer 2 giving so little value compared to 1.
Good thing gen 1 doesn't have them, we only have to deal with those degenerate partial trapping users
There's no "here's why" in the title. Now I'm mad!
JK
Spikes and sand greatly reduce stall imo and as someone who hates stall I am happy with that
so i come bearing an example of this kind of thing happening in another competitive game entirely. in the realm of top yugioh, many formats are extremely skill intensive and interactive except for one card, but this card is a huge factor in the power of the top deck(s). most notably this happened with vanity’s emptiness and djinn, releaser of rituals. because of how sacky (think “haxy” in pokémon terms) these cards can be, and how much they linearize the format, players like patrick hoban would reveal they were siding out their copies of vanity’s and djinn face up (imagine revealing your lax set in gen 2 ou between games 1 and 2) as a way to propose a gentleman’s agreement to remove the card. in general this was extremely successful ok his part, as these formats were often tested or played without these sacky cards to accentuate the skill expression of the format even at the time, however hoban reveals in his book that and angle shot he developed but never used where one would side out their copies of these sacky cards face up, then immediately secretly readd them to their deck to play game 2 at a significant advantage, was used by various top players during such formats. yugioh’s code of conduct does cover for situations like this, as dishonesty of this style is generally banned under player behavior clauses, but it goes to show that gentlemen’s agreements only work when the would actually have the integrity to back it up
I've played yugioh but never gotten to a point where I would identify meaningful skill nor interactions, like it all looks like auto pilot engines to me. Are there any resources or game analyses out there you would recommend?
@@tuberialolicon-tanuki6533 all I can really recommend is looking at what top players are putting out on yt. guys like pak, Jessie kotton, n3sh, Joshua Schmidt, bohdan temnyk are all good places to look. its also impossible not to recommend the aforementioned road of the king by patrick hoban. its the seminal text on the sorta philosophy of top yugioh. sadly ygo lacks the wealth of historical resources that games like magic have. theres not really a “who’s the beatdown” or “control player’s bible”
I miss forums. I was on PokeStadium for a long time and remember the legendary riot that ended it all
I see nothing wrong with two players at the top of a tournament agreeing to their own rules as long as no actual tier rules are broken. I honestly don’t think anyone even has a right to complain about it.
as someone who loves gen 8, i don't know if hazards are broken. however, gen 8 definitely has hazards not being broken - particularly recently theres some teams that simply do not have defog or do not have hazards due to the prevalence of hdb making both less needed, which I think is very interesting & opens up a lot of novel paths for teambuilding.
Love your rambling. Keep up your great work!
I *hate* Spikes and entry hazards, but even as someone who runs Spikeless strats a lot in the tier I don't mind them too much (at least when I can force the player to not be able to get all 3 layers down). If they set up all three layers of Spikes, then that's on me for not pressuring Skarmory/Forretress/Cloyster enough. I can see an argument for 3 layers being too much, but then you have to wonder if it's too much just for Gen 3 OU or for the future gens as well (at least the ones without Boots)?
As for the Gentleman's agreement, it's fine in theory but then that leading to them going stall-heavy because of it was disappointing. Mostly because stall is just not fun to watch as a spectator.
i mean if people are so mad they did it maybe they should get good and be in the finals so that doesnt happen :)
Holy crap I remember this
If stealth rocks didn't exist I would probably ztill be into competition
If DP was bad enough to kill your interest in competitive, betting odds are against your surviving BW.
I mean you can still be into competition since gen 1-3 are still played at the highest level, so seems like a false excuse
If I cared back then probably be angry. Its a bit unsportsmanlike to other players of the tournament. But in hindsight was cool that it happened so we get a what if spikes was banned video from bkc
PLAYING MULTIPLE GAMES WITH ROCKS AND THEN BANNING SPIKES LMAO
I want to see an Advance tourney with stealth rock. That would be something
IMO the gen 8 metagame is the ideal balance of hazards. Boots provided a lot more wiggle room against hazards, while knock off eliminates the immunity in long run.
So they agreed to a spikeless game and NO ONE brought suicune?
I'm nobody but I really don't think that Skarm is the best ADV Mon. It's great, Spikes are great, but Skarm is truly an unsplashable Mon. If you're gonna use it, you need to completely build around it, because it becomes extremely exploitable and nearly useless without support. You need to fit mons that abuse spikes, mons that beat the spike immunes, and mons that can cover Skarm's ass with its passivity and exploitable matchups. Tar, on the other hand, is still #1 in my mind because not only is sand an automatic and reliable source of passive damage, but it's also a very capable, splashable, versatile, and threatening force in its own right. Virtually no team would suffer from Tar's inclusion, but Skarmory seriously constrains the structure of any team it's included on. tl;dr TTar is still the top dog because it can be the first or last consideration on a team, whereas Skarm is very needy and always necessitates being the first consideration in teambuilding.
Hazards are a necessary evil. Even if they’re flawed the ability of stall being too powerful does just kill enjoyment for me an others on a viewing level as well.
Offense vs stall can be interesting to watch but stall vs stall is just the worst. Especially ADV no spikes sounds extra nightmarish with 32 pp recover…
Seeing how popular boots are since they exist, there might be some problems around hazards. That said, im not sure just banning them would make anything better.
I can imagine 100's of ways to nerf entry hazards, and each of them would have to be balance tested for months and probably every one of them is bad and its not like modding the game to make it more balanced was ever an option.
I think ADV spikes are beautiful
Let's you have consistency with calcs in a crazy game
I think hazards aren't that bad. I mean it's annoying to face the same teams over and over, and it gets old when all of your opponents are trying to execute the same game plan. But on the other hand, it's a part of the game, and if your team is so easily exploitable, vulnerable and can't deal with a move like spike, or toxic, or twave, etc, then reality is your team simply can't be the best team. I do hate skarmory and blissey though, ngl. Mostly because I'm a setup sweeper type player and getting toxiced and infinitely stalled out is probably the most frustrating defeat I could have.
I think no spikes or sand in gen 3 would be detrimental to the meta. There's not enough power in this gen, if we allowed this then the game would just be swamped with stall or set up mons with boosting berries. This forces progress especially in a relatively underpowered gen. I understand that it's centralizing and annoying but the games would just be too long on top of being boring. It encourages you to plan beforehand and adapt on the fly hence the allowance of trapping in this gen which is a symptom again of the underpowered nature of this meta
is this the one where they played without spike- yep
I wish all competitive games had a rule that if 2 players agree to it they can do literally anything. Imagine a pokémon tournament where they just decide to play Melee in the finals instead 😈
lel
well melee is a much better game so that would be cool
They did a tournament called “Bad things happening to good people” with this exact premise… I won’t spoil the outcome for you
I would say, that spikes are a nececary evil in almost every gen of pokemon. Cause without them everything goes down hill. Just imagin regenerator stall teams without spikes to keep them in check... its nightmarefuel. There would be no way to make progress. However, i would say that in gen 3 spikes are in a spot between balanced and not usefull at all. They are very easy to remove, as claydoll is an absolute powerhouse in gen 3 and skarm gets destroyed by magneton, meaning that its far easyer to match the oppents spikes with your own and there is the option to build a team fully imune to them. Hance a spot between balanced and not usefull at all. The far more powerfull tool in gen 3 is sand in my opinion. Any good gen 3 team needs to either have a ttar of its own, or needs to be able to abuse the sand set by the opponents ttar and good ways to out it.
That "easy win" from ojama was actually one rock slide flinch away from a loss wasn't it? Lol
Was tyranitar also banned in the 2nd match?
no
What do I hate about singles?
no item clause
a world with ONE heavy duty boots as opposed to 3+ a team would be very interesting in my opinion, but maybe I'm just recreating gen 6/7.
I'm fine with Skarmory, Fortress and such plus their players but Spikes sucks lol. I like it that neither brought Spikes. I think it was a great move and you guys should've tried banning it and unbanning later to follow suit if anything
If Sand is your claim, ban sand too and unban if it wasn't the issue
Spikes are just so effective that they're frustrating. People use spikes and are so dedicated to getting all three layers, it feels separate from the rest of the mind games. I respect the progress they make and how they make for faster play, but I wish rapid spin was better. Spikes go up when someone uses protect, rapid spin should do the same and get rid of spikes on a protect. I get ghosts blocking it, but the inverse protect rules have always been weird to me.
Also, TTar not only halts lax's and cune's dominance, but he warps the tier into favoring sand immunes. That's interesting. He doesn't have the Sp Def boost here, his counter play can be achieved in a ton of ways, with a random fighting/water/ground coverage move on a non-stab mon. It is much more difficult to beat skarm/bliss with non-stab coverage, and if you don't have dug/mag, both frail mons, skarmory and blissey are very free to switch out until it's the last mon. Unless you're also bringing spikes and applying offensive pressure that way to blissey. Which comes back around and feels limiting because it's so effective.
Also, f gengar
Woulda been nice and ironic to for toxic roar drill peck skarm to crush that match, what with neither person bringing the Ton.
Why is Ojama banned from smogon?
Too bad this whole controversy was quickly overshadowed by Mazargate
i just wish there were more reliable options to get rid of spikes tbh, even in later gens
Is the thread SPL 8?
yes
No Spikes Monkey Paw
Skarmory
Blissey
Snorlax
Celebi
Suicune
Jirachi
???? Not sure
Bkcontent👍
Jeez four pokemon with toxic and leech spam celebi no wonder people were upset lmao. I got tilted just watching lmao
i like skarmory though :(
I’m confused as to how these 2 players were considered great ADV players? I’m admittedly new to ADV and know nothing on its history but even I know how central spikes are to the tier. Literally nothing about the metagame would be the same without them. So I don’t see how you can be considered a great ADV player and be so opposed to their existence.
Removing them would result in an unrecognizable metagame going against everything ADV has evolved into for the past 2 decades. Not to mention that match was probably the most boring ADV game I’ve ever watched since the absence of spikes turns it into a stall-war where there is little to no pressure that can be applied to defensive Pokémon.
Did you hear the video ? They wanted to make a statement.
As for their background, Mcmeghan and Ojama are considered to be top 5 players of all time, not only in ADV but throughout every generations. Mcmeghan also has the best record of this year SPL in ADV, believe me they know what they are doing.
Well even the greats can get blind sided and be "lost in the sauce" sometimes.
It doesn't feel good when you want to optimize something new, but constantly run into the same dead end (spikes in this case).
Even BKC mentions how frustrated/annoyed he get at times when confronting the restrictiveness of spikes/hazards.
Maybe a bad day/seed of doubt was planted at the right time and you're down the rabbit hole for longer than you should.
Yeah, hazards is so important. This game was incredibly boring.
Yeah, no, that's a disgrace to the game
your opinion is invalid
Spikes are both annoying and boring. They make boring teams and boring battles. Rocks are even worse. Entry hazards in general are just terrible for the game. It's already enough of a potential hazard just to switch out a pokemon depending on if it's a good or bad read. I just think adding an additional limitation(and one that's much more limited for removal compared to things like status or weather which have more options to get around) makes the game more standardized and predictable....which is boring.