Replays in the video: replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-40005 replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-36782 replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-43454
The first thing I thought of when you said hazards was occupational ones, like danger in the workplace or the mental anguish when somebody tries to force 6 low tier mons without a game plan
Volcarona with boots: *exists BKC: What do you mean you ignore your x4 Stealth Rock weakness, three layers of spikes, two layers of toxic spikes and only take sandstorm chip?!? Why would they let this happen?!? Volcarona: *sweeps team*
it's funny how in 5g OU ferrothorn spinblock starmie and skarmory spinblock excadrill with either both hazards or rocky helmet then you have the reuniclus + zam teams ofc
I think the “ignoring hazards” is a lot more prevalent in DPP now, especially with the common stall of Ttar, Skarm, Rotom, Clef, Jirachi, Starmie teams / Hippo, Gliscor, Clef teams
@@AQW0RIDS yeah it’s more like acknowledging rocks is a problem , and using mons that aren’t weak to them so you can continually make progress without worrying about switching in
@@AQW0RIDS you build the team to be able to not care while in game. Actually pretending hazards don't exist is how you lose games VS both stall and ho alike
What they need to do is limit the ditribution of hazards to make them more comparable to the hazard removers. Hazard setters are just too good and easy to use compared to the removal options we have. They need to give rocks or hazards in general the scald treatment.
Yeah, imagine if they gutted defog distribution and processed to buff spikes and rocks distribution while adding the perfect spin blocker? Thankfully that didn't happen
They tried that, and then they gave literally every ground type Spikes. Also it’s hard to make those moves actually good. Defog is to Singles as Protect is to Doubles: very useful, but doesn’t win games alone
@@lancesmith8298 Yeah, I get what you mean about Defog because if hazards aren't good people just won't use Defog because otherwise it does literally nothing. But if nearly every mon learned a hazard removal move like nearly every mon knows a hazard it would be a lot less of a problem (Ik this is an exaggeration but it's not far from the truth seeing just how many mons learn a move that sets up hazards).
Distribution is small part of the problem IMO. The bigger issue is that hazards almost always progress the game more than removal. • Rapid Spin and Defog don't do much other than generate opportunities for your opponent. You only get value out of these if you can take advantage of the removal period to overcome the tempo loss. Defog is particularly bad because it's also tauntable. • Magic Bounce is cool but distribution isn't great, it's predictable, and most importantly it forces you to switch. (really bad) • Taunt is the only good "removal" tool as it always trades 1:1 if your opponent tries to set-up. Issue is you either delay hazards or you lose a turn depending on what your opponent does. You generally don't want to let your opponent decide the outcome of a turn. Between all of these, Taunt is probably the best and Defog is probably the worst. All are exploitable and thus inconsistent. Hazards are just so strong that removing them can sometimes justify the opportunity cost. Because of limited team slots, you want to run removal on 'Mons that have other tools at their disposal to help off-set that cost which ends up further limiting our pool of viable removal options. And then, like BKC mentioned, you don't really *need* to run removal. Often it's simply better to develop more pressure around your own hazard stacking game than to try and limit your opponent's through removal. This is what leads us to sand/spikes/MG/knock driven meta-games. Unfortunately, 'Mons kind of blows without hazards and limiting hazard distribution creates more rigid team constructs similar to how weather teams operate. I think it's better to improve the viability of hazard removal than restrict the viability of hazard set-up. Not only is removal easier to balance but we also get more options at our disposal which is always fun. I'd rather have more viable options than less.
The hazard siutation in Gen 7 OU was good, shame GF had to change it tbh. Lots of good defoggers, but hazards were still fairly strong. Not a fan of either HDB's or GF gutting defog distrubution
The fact that Gen 9 had literally one Pokemon per hazard removal move for an incredibly long time really killed it for me. Corviknight had Defog, Tusk had Rapid Spin, Glimmora had Mortal Spin, and Cinderace had Court Change.
hey kevin this is an awesome vid! it’s also a great opportunity for me to suggest a video idea I’ve wanted to suggest for a while, which is a hypothetical - what would DPP OU look like with gen 6 defog? I think it’d be a really interesting question because I don’t think it would make rocks significantly weaker (and the role of pokes like ttar trapping defog lati’s in gen 6 is evidence that defog can be played around like spin, albeit by different means) but it would perhaps prevent it from having such a limiting role in the metagame.
The best form of hasard removal is a defog from corviknight/ landorus in gen 8. Spinners often feel so ass, you often need to sac them to get it off...
i feel like everytime magic guard, hdb and gliscor are mentioned, the question ends up being "are hazards broken", if you just think long enough about it
It boggles my mind that Heavy Booty Doots were more unanimously hated than Tera, and only one of those got put to a vote. It’s a generic defensive item that provides zero healing, status removal, or blanking entire moves, but somehow it’s the worst thing that ever happened to Gen 8, and not “guess correctly once a game or perish”
@@lancesmith8298They suck because they enable the most degenerate playstyle. Nobody wants every ladder battle to last an hour. Nobody wants 100+ turn games it’s why Gen 2 is by far the least popular OU.
@@dylanf3108 I will gladly take an hour of my life playing a good game of Pokemon versus an hour playing 5 guessing games against the opponent’s Kingambit and losing. I’m not anti-bullshit, my third favorite OU is Gen 1, I’m anti-HO being the predominant strategy, and Tera is the type of universal mechanic to make sweepers even more annoying.
wondering, doesn't dealing with hazards often also mean dealing with knock off? Sometimes to me it feels like knock off accentuates hazards so much the only way you can handle it long term is magic guard / pheal gliscor (or i guess sticky hold gastrodon) This get me thinking: what happens if there is a knock off user that beats the magic guarders/glisc? Could be that the direction things are heading toward?
i think hazards are great as a concept, but the execution fell off drastically in gen 4 and it's gone up and down wildly since then. firstly i think rocks are just stupid, i get that gamefreak didn't want to be stuck balancing the game around flying/levitate mons ignoring the only hazard, but rocks were unnecessarily harsh as a nerf. the physical special split giving ttar a physical pursuit also made the hazard war a lot more annoying, in gen 3 you had to go out of your way to use a special attacking ttar to use pursuit (and gengar could ev to live), but gen 4 onwards it was the default set which made spinblocking way less consistent and led to the reliance on focus blast for every dark weak mon. gen 5 was a little better with more magic guard users, but the mons that got it were too strong so that became an annoyance rather than a good thing. gen 6 and 7 managed to make hazards fun again though, defog was an amazing addition because it was consistent counterplay to enemy hazards at the cost of your own hazards, so there was still a reason to use spin instead and the hazard meta was overall very balanced and satisfying. then in gen 8 gamefreak got sick of balancing around the op rocks and pursuit that they created so they added boots and removed pursuit which made the hazard meta suck again, but corviknight held everything together and magnezone made sure it wasn't too dominant. and then in gen 9 just to make sure nobody had fun they released gholdengo, so now there's no longer any consistent way to remove hazards and the default way to build teams is with boots spam. and when you add boots spam to the growing collection of "safe" mechanics like scald, knock, widespread pivoting, stab nukes and regenerator, the entire game just becomes a competition to make the safest play every turn and teams fully focus on extremely offensive or defensive mons and strategies
My plan for keeping my hazards is to run a suicide lead and 5 ghosts. I do get reamed by Tyranitar but I’m winning the hazard war so who’s really winning here
Replays in the video:
replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-40005
replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-36782
replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-43454
They say ignorance is bliss, but blissey can't ignore those 3 layer spikes.
Gen 8 blissy can tho
Gen 9 Blissey aswell
Ignorance is bliss, if it was ignorant and unaware of those spikes it would be unharmed
Gen 8 Bliss with new Jordans:
ignorance is clef
Video ended abruptly because Kevin isn't immune to sand. This is the power of passive damage and a case for Reuniclus to be banned.
Or got taunted
The first thing I thought of when you said hazards was occupational ones, like danger in the workplace or the mental anguish when somebody tries to force 6 low tier mons without a game plan
Was about to head to a training presentation at work but you already know I’m skipping because this is the only education I need today
Impress your boss with the knowledge of how to play around Stealth Rock.
Volcarona with boots: *exists
BKC: What do you mean you ignore your x4 Stealth Rock weakness, three layers of spikes, two layers of toxic spikes and only take sandstorm chip?!? Why would they let this happen?!?
Volcarona: *sweeps team*
it's funny how in 5g OU ferrothorn spinblock starmie and skarmory spinblock excadrill with either both hazards or rocky helmet
then you have the reuniclus + zam teams ofc
damn BKC got taunted before they could end the video
I think the “ignoring hazards” is a lot more prevalent in DPP now, especially with the common stall of Ttar, Skarm, Rotom, Clef, Jirachi, Starmie teams / Hippo, Gliscor, Clef teams
Is it really "ignoring hazards" if your entire team is designed around the existence of them? Not a single mon on that team is weak to rocks.
@@AQW0RIDS yeah it’s more like acknowledging rocks is a problem , and using mons that aren’t weak to them so you can continually make progress without worrying about switching in
@@AQW0RIDSignoring hazards as in you don't care if they are there
@@Dragostorm21 Seems like you care if they are there if your entire team is designed around stealth rock existing.
@@AQW0RIDS you build the team to be able to not care while in game.
Actually pretending hazards don't exist is how you lose games VS both stall and ho alike
Spinning is useful when you’re able to put enough pressure on your opponent that them using a turn to get up rocks is a waste
I hope you're doing well BKC
What they need to do is limit the ditribution of hazards to make them more comparable to the hazard removers. Hazard setters are just too good and easy to use compared to the removal options we have. They need to give rocks or hazards in general the scald treatment.
Yeah, imagine if they gutted defog distribution and processed to buff spikes and rocks distribution while adding the perfect spin blocker? Thankfully that didn't happen
They tried that, and then they gave literally every ground type Spikes.
Also it’s hard to make those moves actually good. Defog is to Singles as Protect is to Doubles: very useful, but doesn’t win games alone
@@lancesmith8298 Yeah, I get what you mean about Defog because if hazards aren't good people just won't use Defog because otherwise it does literally nothing. But if nearly every mon learned a hazard removal move like nearly every mon knows a hazard it would be a lot less of a problem (Ik this is an exaggeration but it's not far from the truth seeing just how many mons learn a move that sets up hazards).
Distribution is small part of the problem IMO. The bigger issue is that hazards almost always progress the game more than removal.
• Rapid Spin and Defog don't do much other than generate opportunities for your opponent. You only get value out of these if you can take advantage of the removal period to overcome the tempo loss. Defog is particularly bad because it's also tauntable.
• Magic Bounce is cool but distribution isn't great, it's predictable, and most importantly it forces you to switch. (really bad)
• Taunt is the only good "removal" tool as it always trades 1:1 if your opponent tries to set-up. Issue is you either delay hazards or you lose a turn depending on what your opponent does. You generally don't want to let your opponent decide the outcome of a turn.
Between all of these, Taunt is probably the best and Defog is probably the worst. All are exploitable and thus inconsistent. Hazards are just so strong that removing them can sometimes justify the opportunity cost. Because of limited team slots, you want to run removal on 'Mons that have other tools at their disposal to help off-set that cost which ends up further limiting our pool of viable removal options.
And then, like BKC mentioned, you don't really *need* to run removal. Often it's simply better to develop more pressure around your own hazard stacking game than to try and limit your opponent's through removal. This is what leads us to sand/spikes/MG/knock driven meta-games.
Unfortunately, 'Mons kind of blows without hazards and limiting hazard distribution creates more rigid team constructs similar to how weather teams operate. I think it's better to improve the viability of hazard removal than restrict the viability of hazard set-up. Not only is removal easier to balance but we also get more options at our disposal which is always fun. I'd rather have more viable options than less.
I only run rocks resisting spikes immune teams because of this. And lose.
Gotta watch out for that ice beam
Blissey in superman is there for a reason
The hazard siutation in Gen 7 OU was good, shame GF had to change it tbh. Lots of good defoggers, but hazards were still fairly strong. Not a fan of either HDB's or GF gutting defog distrubution
The fact that Gen 9 had literally one Pokemon per hazard removal move for an incredibly long time really killed it for me. Corviknight had Defog, Tusk had Rapid Spin, Glimmora had Mortal Spin, and Cinderace had Court Change.
@@lancesmith8298and nowadays corv doesn't even run defog
As much as I appreciate gholdengo's anti defog tech I actually don't appreciate it and hope if gholdengo ever returns defog targets the user instead
First gen I got to see age: ss: when everyone’s a Superman team. No one will be 😈
What an abrupt ending
Instructions unclear. 2 layers of Spikes now do 25% in Gen 10.
hey kevin this is an awesome vid! it’s also a great opportunity for me to suggest a video idea I’ve wanted to suggest for a while, which is a hypothetical - what would DPP OU look like with gen 6 defog? I think it’d be a really interesting question because I don’t think it would make rocks significantly weaker (and the role of pokes like ttar trapping defog lati’s in gen 6 is evidence that defog can be played around like spin, albeit by different means) but it would perhaps prevent it from having such a limiting role in the metagame.
The best form of hasard removal is a defog from corviknight/ landorus in gen 8.
Spinners often feel so ass, you often need to sac them to get it off...
Aka ," A History of Dealing With an Overtly Busted Part of the Game, Hazards"
i feel like everytime magic guard, hdb and gliscor are mentioned, the question ends up being "are hazards broken", if you just think long enough about it
It boggles my mind that Heavy Booty Doots were more unanimously hated than Tera, and only one of those got put to a vote. It’s a generic defensive item that provides zero healing, status removal, or blanking entire moves, but somehow it’s the worst thing that ever happened to Gen 8, and not “guess correctly once a game or perish”
Hazards are kinda a necessary evil tbh
@@lancesmith8298They suck because they enable the most degenerate playstyle. Nobody wants every ladder battle to last an hour. Nobody wants 100+ turn games it’s why Gen 2 is by far the least popular OU.
@@dylanf3108 I will gladly take an hour of my life playing a good game of Pokemon versus an hour playing 5 guessing games against the opponent’s Kingambit and losing. I’m not anti-bullshit, my third favorite OU is Gen 1, I’m anti-HO being the predominant strategy, and Tera is the type of universal mechanic to make sweepers even more annoying.
wondering, doesn't dealing with hazards often also mean dealing with knock off? Sometimes to me it feels like knock off accentuates hazards so much the only way you can handle it long term is magic guard / pheal gliscor (or i guess sticky hold gastrodon)
This get me thinking: what happens if there is a knock off user that beats the magic guarders/glisc? Could be that the direction things are heading toward?
Roar + spike is all you need
i think hazards are great as a concept, but the execution fell off drastically in gen 4 and it's gone up and down wildly since then. firstly i think rocks are just stupid, i get that gamefreak didn't want to be stuck balancing the game around flying/levitate mons ignoring the only hazard, but rocks were unnecessarily harsh as a nerf. the physical special split giving ttar a physical pursuit also made the hazard war a lot more annoying, in gen 3 you had to go out of your way to use a special attacking ttar to use pursuit (and gengar could ev to live), but gen 4 onwards it was the default set which made spinblocking way less consistent and led to the reliance on focus blast for every dark weak mon. gen 5 was a little better with more magic guard users, but the mons that got it were too strong so that became an annoyance rather than a good thing. gen 6 and 7 managed to make hazards fun again though, defog was an amazing addition because it was consistent counterplay to enemy hazards at the cost of your own hazards, so there was still a reason to use spin instead and the hazard meta was overall very balanced and satisfying. then in gen 8 gamefreak got sick of balancing around the op rocks and pursuit that they created so they added boots and removed pursuit which made the hazard meta suck again, but corviknight held everything together and magnezone made sure it wasn't too dominant. and then in gen 9 just to make sure nobody had fun they released gholdengo, so now there's no longer any consistent way to remove hazards and the default way to build teams is with boots spam. and when you add boots spam to the growing collection of "safe" mechanics like scald, knock, widespread pivoting, stab nukes and regenerator, the entire game just becomes a competition to make the safest play every turn and teams fully focus on extremely offensive or defensive mons and strategies
I've been subbed to you for almost a year now and I still don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
thank you
My plan for keeping my hazards is to run a suicide lead and 5 ghosts. I do get reamed by Tyranitar but I’m winning the hazard war so who’s really winning here
starmie :)
When this creative acne ends it wil be a sad time
Lets go say naaa
BKC
673 views in 1 hour bro fell off
45 seconds, no view?
Fell off😔👎
Bikes Krocks Cnightmare 🫨