Shadow Tag

[UB-01 Kenobi]

We discussed Shadow Tag a little bit in the Smogon Bans and Suspect Tests thread, but I feel that this is sort of a hot topic these days that deserves its own thread. For those of you who don't know, there's a Gengarite Suspect going on in Ubers right now, but it's also "Shadow Tag Ban Phase 1" - as in, the highest level Ubers players are looking for the Ability Shadow Tag to be removed from the Ubers metagame altogether. This is more relevant than other bans from Ubers such as Moody and OHKO moves because it makes one "Pokémon" (Mega Gengar) completely unusable in competitive play, as it is an Uber Pokémon and if the only Ability it is capable of having is banned, then it is banned by extension. It also bans Wobbuffet and makes Gothitelle completely nonviable in Ubers, but they'll continue to be able to skulk around the lower tiers, since they (unlike MGar) aren't broken pieces of shit in OU. Even if the Shadow Tag ban extends down the tier list, Gothitelle at least will be able to be used in NU or wherever and I guess if you really want to use Telepathy Wobb you can do that, too. Now then, since this is a mildly touchy subject let's all try to be civil - it would be ideal if you have at least some knowledge of the Ubers metagame before posting here. Maybe watch some SPL or Grand Slam replays or commentated YouTube matches.

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/user/dblacstardust <- Edgar is the man when it comes to Ubers, a fantastic player and teambuilder with high success when he plays/his teams are used both in tourneys and on the ladder. Watching his vids is a great way to gain some contextual knowledge before posting in this thread if you know literally nothing about Ubers.

My opinion? I just started playing Ubers for the first time since late 2013, so I didn't ladder for the suspect test, but if I had I would've voted ban. I personally believe that Shadow Tag is just as uncompetitive as Swagger or Moody because it forces coinflips - with Swagger, the flip is more apparent. You hit yourself and lose or you don't and win. With Shadow Tag, it's more subtle but it's there - do I double out of my Palkia into my Landorus-T predicting their MGengar so I can KO with EQ, or do I stay in and Thunder this Kyogre? There is no way to "outpredict" the opponent in this scenario, as either strategy is viable for the opponent to pursue. If your coin comes up tails, then either your Landorus takes a Water Spout to the face or your Palkia is killed by repeated Sludge Waves, Perish Trapping, or a Destiny Bond and Kyogre can come back in and sweep your team with its counter gone. It's just as impossible to outplay the coinflip here as it was with Swagger. (For those of you who don't know, that's where my user title comes from - it's a meme on Smogon about a noob who thought you could just outplay Swagger.) That's just one example, of course. Mega Gengar doesn't only beat Palkia 1v1, it can beat literally any other Pokémon in the game thanks to its great SpA, decent bulk, amazing Speed, and perfect movepool. Your wincon walled by a stallmon like Blissey? Run Perish Trap MGar. Your Xerneas have its sweep foiled by MScizor? HP Fire MGar. EKiller Arceus wreck your team? Try Focus Blast or Will-O-Wisp MGengar, even if they Shadow Claw on your switch it won't kill, and you outspeed. Yveltal a problem? Not anymore, Destiny Bond forces him to either suicide or U-Turn (if he even has it) and take another 25% next time he comes in on Rocks, and after 2 switches into Rocks then EKiller can KO with unboosted Extreme Speed. (252+ Atk Silk Scarf Arceus Extreme Speed vs. 0 HP / 0- Def Yveltal: 189-223 (48 - 56.7%) -- 89.8% chance to 2HKO). Gothitelle follows a similar principle - come in on support Arceus or whatever, set up 6 Calm Minds, Rest off the damage, as its uninvested Judgements bounce off your +6 252 HP/252+ SDef hide, then set Trick Roo as you wake up and proceed straight to your 6-0 victory (do not pass GO, do not collect $200).

So what are all y'alls opinions on Shadow Tag and MGengar? Do you want MGar to stay? Do you want Shadow Tag to stick around but just remove MGar? Or do you want Shadow Tag removed from the meta all together?

 

[TerraTF]

Not played much ubers in my time, but know the effects of Shadow Tag very well.

When I began to play there were only two Shadow Tag users, Wobbuffett and Wynaut. Both were banned until Gen 5 when team preview came around as team preview "Made Shadow Tag less surprising." Gen 5 gave us a few more Shadow Tag users than before, with Shadow Tag being the HA for Gothitelle's family and for Chandelure. From the time I remember of playing the Gen 5 meta, Shadow Tag Chandelure was in almost the same position as M-Gengar is now, but not being banned from the Meta since it had access to other abilities.

The thing about M-Gengar is not just Shadow Tag that breaks it. Shadow Tag along with Gengar's wide variety of moves. Gengar, being a Pokemon that has been OU since Generation 1, is already a proven Pokemon. Add a broken ability like Shadow Tag to a Pokemon with such variety as well as the increase in Speed and Special Attack that Gengar got and you're just wishing ruin someones day.

I do believe that we'll see Shadow Tag getting banned from the Meta leading M-Gengar to be the first Pokemon ever banned from the meta, as opposed to my prediction of Primal Kyogre.

 

[DCM]

to be honest, I'm very torn on my opinion of Shadow Tag. I've actually been playing a lot of Ubers recently and I've found that Gothitelle / Wobuffet are NOWHERE near as broken as M-Gengar when it comes to shadow tagging. Mega Gengar's decent bulk allows him the opportunity to fuck something up, and then destiny bond whatever is switched in, but Gothitelle's gimmick is setting up on walls or things that can't touch it. Ubers doesn't have a tremendous amount of pokemon that allow Gothitelle the set up opportunity it needs.

I'm still torn on MGengar's ban, but I'm definitely not feeling a Shadow tag ban.

 

[Alexey]

Mega Gengar is not more or less broken than Gothitelle, they just function differently as trappers: Gengar is faster, hits harder, and has access to Destiny Bond, Goth doesn't waste a turn MEvolving to obtain Shadow Tag, the former just happens to generally perform better in the Ubers environment

I see Shadow Tag as the problem itself because of the coinflips that it triggers, which both GB (in the OP) and I myself (in the Bans and Suspects thread) have already pointed out
I want to see Shadow Tag gone and, seeing as I have the reqs, I will be voting ban

In addition, I don't see this as removal of a Pokemon from the entire meta, I see this as removal of one of the items and, by extension, Gengar sets from the meta

EDIT: Not really a discussion, but, rather, a lengthy "why Shadow Tag sucks", but still interesting Mega Gengar + Shadowtag Suspect Test Talk - YouTube

 

[TerraTF]

I feel that next generation Gamefreak needs to do a revisit with M-Gengar and fix it. The combination of 3 Attacks+Destiny Bond as well as Shadow Tag is one of the most dangerous combos in the game. A simple fix, like what was done with Gothitelle, possibly changing its ability to Infiltrator and it would make M-Gengar much more manageable.

 

[UB-01 Kenobi]

Not played much ubers in my time, but know the effects of Shadow Tag very well.

When I began to play there were only two Shadow Tag users, Wobbuffett and Wynaut. Both were banned until Gen 5 when team preview came around as team preview "Made Shadow Tag less surprising." Gen 5 gave us a few more Shadow Tag users than before, with Shadow Tag being the HA for Gothitelle's family and for Chandelure. From the time I remember of playing the Gen 5 meta, Shadow Tag Chandelure was in almost the same position as M-Gengar is now, but not being banned from the Meta since it had access to other abilities.

The thing about M-Gengar is not just Shadow Tag that breaks it. Shadow Tag along with Gengar's wide variety of moves. Gengar, being a Pokemon that has been OU since Generation 1, is already a proven Pokemon. Add a broken ability like Shadow Tag to a Pokemon with such variety as well as the increase in Speed and Special Attack that Gengar got and you're just wishing ruin someones day.

I do believe that we'll see Shadow Tag getting banned from the Meta leading M-Gengar to be the first Pokemon ever banned from the meta, as opposed to my prediction of Primal Kyogre.

Chandelure's HA was never released, and Shadow Tag was never suspected, so you're clearly misremembering

 

[TerraTF]

Not played much ubers in my time, but know the effects of Shadow Tag very well.

When I began to play there were only two Shadow Tag users, Wobbuffett and Wynaut. Both were banned until Gen 5 when team preview came around as team preview "Made Shadow Tag less surprising." Gen 5 gave us a few more Shadow Tag users than before, with Shadow Tag being the HA for Gothitelle's family and for Chandelure. From the time I remember of playing the Gen 5 meta, Shadow Tag Chandelure was in almost the same position as M-Gengar is now, but not being banned from the Meta since it had access to other abilities.

The thing about M-Gengar is not just Shadow Tag that breaks it. Shadow Tag along with Gengar's wide variety of moves. Gengar, being a Pokemon that has been OU since Generation 1, is already a proven Pokemon. Add a broken ability like Shadow Tag to a Pokemon with such variety as well as the increase in Speed and Special Attack that Gengar got and you're just wishing ruin someones day.

I do believe that we'll see Shadow Tag getting banned from the Meta leading M-Gengar to be the first Pokemon ever banned from the meta, as opposed to my prediction of Primal Kyogre.

Chandelure's HA was never released, and Shadow Tag was never suspected, so you're clearly misremembering

Chandelure had its HA changed none the less. And Shadow Tag was banned in 4th Gen.

 

[UB-01 Kenobi]

Not played much ubers in my time, but know the effects of Shadow Tag very well.

When I began to play there were only two Shadow Tag users, Wobbuffett and Wynaut. Both were banned until Gen 5 when team preview came around as team preview "Made Shadow Tag less surprising." Gen 5 gave us a few more Shadow Tag users than before, with Shadow Tag being the HA for Gothitelle's family and for Chandelure. From the time I remember of playing the Gen 5 meta, Shadow Tag Chandelure was in almost the same position as M-Gengar is now, but not being banned from the Meta since it had access to other abilities.

The thing about M-Gengar is not just Shadow Tag that breaks it. Shadow Tag along with Gengar's wide variety of moves. Gengar, being a Pokemon that has been OU since Generation 1, is already a proven Pokemon. Add a broken ability like Shadow Tag to a Pokemon with such variety as well as the increase in Speed and Special Attack that Gengar got and you're just wishing ruin someones day.

I do believe that we'll see Shadow Tag getting banned from the Meta leading M-Gengar to be the first Pokemon ever banned from the meta, as opposed to my prediction of Primal Kyogre.

Chandelure's HA was never released, and Shadow Tag was never suspected, so you're clearly misremembering

Chandelure had its HA changed none the less. And Shadow Tag was banned in 4th Gen.

No, Wobbuffet was banned in 4th Gen. Yes, I realize it's effectively the same thing but it's an important distinction - we're not talking about just removing one Pokémon (MGar) from the metagame (which looks very likely at this point), but an entire ability, a la the Moody ban. And the HA change had nothing to do with Smogon, it was Game Freak having a teensy bit of common sense for just a moment. (Then they tossed all that common sense in the trash and were like, "hey you know how we thought Shadow Tag Chandelure was too broken? What if we gave it to a Mega Pokémon who had the same or higher base stats as Chandelure in all but defense, plus a better typing and a bitching movepool on top of that?")

 

[TerraTF]

No, Wobbuffet was banned in 4th Gen. Yes, I realize it's effectively the same thing but it's an important distinction - we're not talking about just removing one Pokémon (MGar) from the metagame (which looks very likely at this point), but an entire ability, a la the Moody ban. And the HA change had nothing to do with Smogon, it was Game Freak having a teensy bit of common sense for just a moment. (Then they tossed all that common sense in the trash and were like, "hey you know how we thought Shadow Tag Chandelure was too broken? What if we gave it to a Mega Pokémon who had the same or higher base stats as Chandelure in all but defense, plus a better typing and a bitching movepool on top of that?")

Yes Shadow Tag wasn't banned in 4th Gen. I understand that a Shadow Tag ban bans an entire Pokemon, which is fine without its Mega mind you. Also your last set of parenthesis basically describes Pokemon in one quote. Might sig that.

 

[Karpi]

Shadow Tag is not inherently overpowered. We have examples of situations when the circumstances led to it being too overpowered, and also examples of when it was not overpowered.

5th gen NU - Shadow Tag was a balanced part of the tier here, being only used by Gothorita, who used it to trap Wish passing Alomomola or psychic types that weren't Musharna. Those pokemon were dominant in the tier, so Gothorita was an anti-meta strategy, but it was still Gothorita, and it crumbled against basically every other pokemon.