Council Minutes

Shrug is "Shrug"
LilyAC is "lily"
Star is "starmaster"
Corporal Levi is "skate sk8 sken"
Luthier is "Luthier"
Coco is " ឵឵"
Fiend is "Fiend"
BurntZebra is "zebraman"
Plas is "you're mom"
tazz is "[TEAM NINJA]tazz"
ggggd is "Pablo"

APRIL 4th
[12:59 PM] zebraman: so what should we suspect next
[3:52 PM] you're mom: presumably something regarding screens. I still think scrag is unhealthy but I think I'm the only 1
[3:53 PM] you're mom: wait for open/end of ladder tour meta. see what it looks like
[4:01 PM] Luthier: scraggy is like fine imo
[4:01 PM] Luthier: there are def ways to beat it
[4:01 PM] Luthier: and woobat being gone nerfs screens a lot imo
[4:22 PM] skate sk8 sken: If there’s nothing pressing then we can free gastly
[4:23 PM] zebraman: did we gain any switch ins to gastly
[4:24 PM] zebraman: or did we just get a couple of things that outspeeds gastly
[4:25 PM] skate sk8 sken: We also got foo back which shuts down munch
[4:25 PM] skate sk8 sken: Idt it’d actually get freed but it wouldn’t hurt to test
[4:25 PM] skate sk8 sken: After waiting a couple wks for the meta to settle or w.e tho
[4:30 PM] zebraman: just doesnt feel like gastly feels very balanced w/o pursuit
[4:33 PM] starmaster: testing gastly is an enormous waste of time dude
[4:33 PM] starmaster: untrappable gastly will forever be stupid
[4:37 PM] zebraman: right now without seeing the woobatless meta, i feel like the next suspect should be natu
[4:38 PM] zebraman: although i sort of see the argument for scraggy
[4:46 PM] Fiend: Scrag is the big 1 for me going in to open
[4:53 PM] zebraman: too many scrag "answers" either rely on getting 50/50s right with sub scraggy (endure vullaby, wow koffing, spore foongus) or just are chipped way too easily and arent really a hard stop to scraggy (timburr)
[4:53 PM] zebraman: especially when screens are up
[4:56 PM] Fiend: I think screens are also plausibly busted still but teams need to be recalibrated before i want to rlly say so
[4:56 PM] zebraman: it seems pretty likely some people will just slap np vull over woobat and call it a day
[5:13 PM] Fiend: Thinking more of not screens teams figuring out what to do for that, magby, with the lack of woobat specific techs
[5:13 PM] Fiend: Overall i don't think trends will be enough but maybe someone finds smthng
[5:36 PM] ឵឵ ឵឵: I don't want to jump into things. We have a couple of weeks of open let's watch that and figure it out from there
[6:21 PM] you're mom: dont test gastly that mon would be so dumb lol
[6:22 PM] ឵឵ ឵឵: We aren't
[6:22 PM] you're mom: ya I think scrag is dumb in bat meta but no longer a thing and I want to see the meta w/o bat for a good amount of time before i call for suspecting anything else personally

APRIL 5th
[11:21 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: free gothita

APRIL 8th
1:29 PM] ឵឵ ឵឵: Meta still blows
[1:32 PM] Shrug: what are the issues?
[1:35 PM] skate sk8 sken: Imo still vullaby
[1:35 PM] skate sk8 sken: But that’s prob a suspect for another time
[1:36 PM] ឵឵ ឵឵: Not sure yet what we should hone in on
[1:36 PM] ឵឵ ឵឵: But the meta isn't fun yet
[1:42 PM] Luthier: i think the issue is the lack of good wincons
[1:42 PM] Luthier: only win cons r
[1:42 PM] Luthier: porygon
[1:42 PM] Luthier: fight spam
[1:42 PM] Luthier: NP vull
[1:42 PM] Luthier: i feel like not much else is good
[1:45 PM] zebraman: sun fire spam is a pretty solid win con, grookey can be a win con vs non pinch teams
[1:45 PM] ឵឵ ឵឵: Monkey is really good
[1:45 PM] zebraman: the concept of good wincons is sort of hard to quantify since lc always has such centralizing splashable mons like vullaby/foo
[1:46 PM] Shrug: has the pix + charmander outcry cooled down a touch?
[1:46 PM] ឵឵ ឵឵: We're also in a weird flux in that our best wincons in the right situations can both win and lose to Foo and Vull
[1:47 PM] zebraman: was there an outcry for that
[1:47 PM] ឵឵ ឵឵: Couple people cried about sun again
[1:47 PM] zebraman: i mean its sorta restricting on building, but i dont know if its any more restricting than other stuff in the meta
[1:47 PM] ឵឵ ឵឵: But I think its fairly healthy all things considered
[1:47 PM] ឵឵ ឵឵: Small sample size though
[1:48 PM] zebraman: i guess my main concern with sun is that there are so few fire resists worth running to begin with
[1:48 PM] zebraman: and pretty much all of them die to diglett
[1:49 PM] zebraman: or arent actual answers to fire types
[1:51 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: id like to see more of sun first
[1:51 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: people only really figured it out a few weeks ago
[1:52 PM] zebraman: is there even an established team yet
[1:52 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: its like
[1:52 PM] zebraman: just the 3 fires+dig+timburr+filler?
[1:52 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: pix/pony/charm/timb/dig filler yeah
[1:53 PM] zebraman: id say once an established team gets built and people get access to it, to a similar level of the grook bat teams, it could be worth considering doing something
[1:58 PM] zebraman: to comfortably deal with sun, you  probably have to run 2 or more of the following: staryu, scarf diglett (or maybe evio dig), double priority core (pawn/timb/fake out grook)
[1:59 PM] zebraman: mareanie/ponyta/onix dont seem to work well enough since they either get melted by fire attacks or get trapped by eject pack into diglett
[1:59 PM] zebraman: webs might matchup decently too
[2:38 PM] Luthier: yea ur right
[2:38 PM] Luthier: sun is rly good again
[3:03 PM] lily: the outcry was just me
[3:03 PM] lily: i still think its probably broken
[4:13 PM] Fiend: screens is still usable
[4:23 PM] ឵឵ ឵឵: I don't think people have really gotten into new screens teams yet
[4:23 PM] ឵឵ ឵឵: but I don't think it'll be as oppressive as the bat
[8:27 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: we'll see
[8:27 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: its still super good
[8:27 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: webs is a lot worse it seems
[8:27 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: just replace grook w/ magby and woobat w NP vull
[8:39 PM] Fiend: the screens ive been tooling w is np vulla grook magby scrag pawn (both of natu, abra)
[8:39 PM] Fiend: sorta havent needed the dino for any reason
[8:41 PM] Fiend: the grookey counter -> magby win line is almost good enough, but distinctly not, to use magby not on screens w some consistency
[8:52 PM] Fiend: also been thinking about webs as a whole, and i think it still wins enough that you should be seeing it in individuals but it's not going to be incredible
[8:54 PM] Fiend: sd foo is pretty alright vs the meta that stuff like this is gonna win

[Skipping stuff not about suspects here]

May 8th

7:58 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: free gothita
[7:58 PM] Fiend: is that a serious thing
[8:00 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: out of everything we have banned it imo has the greatest likelihood of being fine, it does rly well in early metas when everything is unstable and single sweeper + goth is crazy. It also has the problem of being incredible on paper but not always panning out (see: oras)
[8:01 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: a couple people were agitating for months to retrospectively ban CM gothita in oras for being theoretically crazy but the thing gets like three or so uses every lcpl
[8:02 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: i dont see any pokemon that I would even consider suspecting at the moment other than a vullaby resuspect but I dislike b2b suspects a lot
[8:02 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: its a bad look
[8:03 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: so i'd support doing a resuspect even if its a long shot before we go into a vullaby resuspect which I anticipate being the next step
[snip]

June 14th
[6:40 PM] you're mom: I haven't played as much prior swsh wise and i wanna see how it performs in lcpl but I wanna be on the record that pory is pretty dumb and might need to be addressed in some way
[6:40 PM] Shrug: seconding

June 16th
[8:14 PM] Shrug: either webs or pory suspect next

June 17th
[8:02 AM] zebraman: webs? are people still running webs
[8:02 AM] zebraman: feel like ive seen more screens than webs
[8:03 AM] Fiend: Webs is not very common
[8:07 AM] zebraman: tbh i just wanna re suspect vull
[8:07 AM] zebraman: but im also willing to suspect pory

June 19th
[11:30 AM] you're mom: very down for a vull resuspect as well when the time comes

June 25th
[5:28 PM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: i would support a pory test
[5:28 PM] Shrug: i agree
[9:18 PM] skate sk8 sken: Wails concern is fine ofc but I think that just waiting until after lcpl should solve it
[9:18 PM] skate sk8 sken: I would prefer that rather than suspecting in the middle of lcpl anyways
[9:26 PM] zebraman: The meta seems pretty different now than it was a few months ago but yeah I wouldn’t see a suspect happening now anyways, by the time we all agree on it, we’d be in week 3 or 4 of lcpl which would then put the end of the suspect near week 6 and then playoffs are right around the corner
[9:26 PM] starmaster: I’d be in favor of it but def after lcpl yeah
[9:27 PM] zebraman: From a tiering standpoint, can we just do suspects and then if a ban happens, wait until whatever event is over?
[9:28 PM] zebraman: Feels like half of every year is off limit for suspects because of various tournaments going on
[9:29 PM] starmaster: it’s not impossible but it sucks
[9:29 PM] zebraman: It would save a few weeks time
[9:29 PM] starmaster: nobody wants to play dead metas
[9:29 PM] starmaster: the end of the previous snake was universally hated
[9:29 PM] starmaster: bc ppl were forced to play dlc1 ou
[9:30 PM] zebraman: That seems pretty different, although I guess a vullaby ban would be pretty impactful
[9:30 PM] zebraman: And would essentially make this a dead meta
[9:30 PM] zebraman: Not all bans would do that though
[9:30 PM] starmaster: yea the scale def varies but regardless
[9:31 PM] starmaster: playing a metagame that no longer exists in a tour that’s supposed to be the flagship lc tour
[9:31 PM] starmaster: sucks dick
[9:31 PM] zebraman: Like if we did a suspect during open and delayed results, then we would have been able to get something done before lcpl
[9:31 PM] starmaster: I mean nobody actually suggested doing anything
[9:31 PM] zebraman: But since lcpl was delayed until mid summer, there was 0 time to do anything even if we wanted to
[9:32 PM] zebraman: I guess the other problem is that big tours generate meta game changes which make things more banworthy
[9:32 PM] lily: doesnt this only save a few days worth of time anyway
[9:33 PM] lily: since u can still start then suspect during the tour, the vote just needs be timed so that it starts when the tour finishes
[9:33 PM] zebraman: In this case it would save like 12 weeks
[9:33 PM] zebraman: If there was a suspect we wanted to happen during LC open, then delayed and then it’s too close to lcpl so it gets delayed until after lcpl
[9:34 PM] lily: you just do it at the end of open then the vote finishes a few days after
[9:34 PM] starmaster: yeah if we wanted a suspect to happen at the end of open
[9:34 PM] starmaster: We 100% could have done it
[9:34 PM] lily: idt this is a problem
[9:34 PM] starmaster: but nobody tried to make that happen lol
[9:34 PM] zebraman: If we did a suspect during lcpl and waited to push the ban, then yeah we would just be saving the duration of the suspect+the few days before
[9:35 PM] zebraman: What was the time between end of LC open and lcpl
[9:35 PM] zebraman: Seemed like a week
[9:35 PM] starmaster: smth like that
[9:35 PM] starmaster: you just start the suspect in semis
[9:35 PM] starmaster: and it ends before lcpl
[9:35 PM] starmaster: and all is well.
[9:36 PM] lily: yea
[9:36 PM] lily: and worst case it overlaps slightly and u have 1 week of rufflet like we did last lcpl iirc
[9:36 PM] lily: doesnt rly matter
[9:37 PM] zebraman: It also seemed like this happened with SM LC at the end of the gen
[9:38 PM] zebraman: Tours were happening so we weren’t doing suspects then 3 months out from a new gen was too late to change the tier at all
[9:40 PM] lily: the problem wasnt getting the suspect done between tours
[9:43 PM] zebraman: The problem is we have too many excuses to not do suspects
[9:44 PM] lily: nobodys even making excuses atm
[9:44 PM] lily: i dont see the problem
[9:45 PM] lily: if we want to suspect pory then do it around lcpl playoffs
[9:45 PM] zebraman: It’s a historical problem
[9:46 PM] starmaster: its really not though
[9:47 PM] starmaster: the issue with vull in sm was the end of the gen shit
[9:47 PM] Shrug: zebra doesnt want to get timelocked out of another go at vullaby, is the subtext
[9:48 PM] starmaster: its not like we got locked out of vull between lc open and lcpl or between whatever and snake
[9:50 PM] zebraman: The suspect evasion has happened multiple times
[9:50 PM] zebraman: If no one else has a problem with it, I guess it’s not a problem
[9:53 PM] lily: btw about porygon
[9:54 PM] lily: as silly as it is id rather resuspect vullaby than suspect pory
[9:54 PM] lily: thats not to say i think either of them are broken ftr but
[9:55 PM] lily: i think the rise of pory has made vull better and vull is closer to broken
[9:56 PM] ឵឵ ឵឵: I think that's the popular opinion lily
[9:56 PM] ឵឵ ឵឵: bar maybe the last part
[9:57 PM] zebraman: If someone has porygon and vullaby on a team, then the opposing person is less likely to switch in pawniard vs the vullaby
[9:57 PM] zebraman: Which I guess makes vullaby better
[9:57 PM] zebraman: Tbh I don’t think vullaby ban will fix pory though
[9:58 PM] lily: u never know but i think it would
[9:59 PM] zebraman: I think pory would be balanced if trappers and vullaby didn’t exist
[9:59 PM] zebraman: Which is a tall order
[9:59 PM] ឵឵ ឵឵: how so
[10:00 PM] zebraman: Well just by virtue of pawniard being able to get taken out so easily by trapinch or getting chipped by vullaby
[10:01 PM] zebraman: Ferroseed is also removed by trapinch essentially
[10:01 PM] zebraman: Or final gambit diglett
[10:01 PM] zebraman: Maybe some people think that pory is balanced if it needs to rely on trapinch to support it
[10:01 PM] zebraman: But I’m not really of that mindset
[10:03 PM] lily: vull supports pory way more than trappers do
[10:03 PM] lily: trapping pawn/ferro isnt all that easy
[10:04 PM] zebraman: Ferroseed, I’ll agree
[10:04 PM] zebraman: Trapping pawniard is pretty easy though
[10:05 PM] zebraman: I just thought about a world with no vullaby and we don’t have to run a flying resist on teams anymore
[11:08 PM] Fiend: No vulla likely changes up most team structures to the point it's not rlly obvious how strong various scarf mons would be

June 26th
[6:20 AM] skate sk8 sken: I think trapinch is only slightly less capable of trapping (offensive) pory than it is pawn anyways, it just has to run special bulk
[6:21 AM] skate sk8 sken: It catches bj and scarf which I think are the most common sets and the ones that are actually tough to walk
[6:23 AM] skate sk8 sken: I don’t like the idea of banning trappers anyways
[6:24 AM] skate sk8 sken: It’s never ended up being necessary after the metagame develops more, and the one time we tried pinch in sm it was a failed experiment
[6:25 AM] skate sk8 sken: (We’ve also banned goth but those were in totally undeveloped metas. I think I’ve expressed this in sm but imo it’s actually p unlikely that goth would’ve been broken there if we let it stay for any length of time)
[6:26 AM] skate sk8 sken: I think in an offensive meta like lc, a guaranteed rkill at the cost of running a v mediocre mon just isn’t actually a broken tradeoff when getting kills isn’t as hard
[6:27 AM] skate sk8 sken: I would prefer a vull suspect btw since we’d be doing it after lcpl, it’s what I meant last night but I’m realizing I was completely unclear
[6:59 AM] starmaster: I’m ok with vull too (bc I voted ban lol) but that’s gonna come down to a policy decision
[6:59 AM] starmaster: what is the “acceptable timeframe” to run it back
[10:51 AM] you're mom: I also prefer 2nd vull suspect before pory suspect

Skipping discussion on suspect timing. There is a lot of this.

June 29th
9:06 AM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: I would like to know if we are running vull back, if its on the table its prob happening since most ppl itc were pro ban then and are now
[9:06 AM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: id vote in favor of a suspect rn only to avoid a stupid one weeks before scl
[9:16 AM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: this is stupid af but at least let the meta develop over lcpl
[9:26 AM] zebraman: @Council does anyone oppose starting a vull suspect this week
[9:27 AM] Pablo: Yes.
[9:27 AM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: stfu pablo
[9:27 AM] zebraman: does anyone who plays mons oppose starting a vull suspect this week*
[9:29 AM] you're mom: nah
[9:38 AM] Shrug: I mean
[9:38 AM] Shrug: I would pref pory
[9:38 AM] Shrug: But I see why vull
[9:39 AM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: Would also prefer pory
[10:09 AM] zebraman: i feel like pory is just a cop out suspect to not suspect vull
[10:21 AM] [TEAM NINJA]tazz: thats just your opinion man
[10:41 AM] skate sk8 sken: for the suspect topic i prefer vull over pory, i think this would do a much better job at addressing the root cause of most meta concerns

[snip] We are back to talking about suspect timelines here.