Proposed Starting Banlist for Gen 5

We need a starting point on this and for now I'm going to ignore Gen 5 pokemon and deal only with Gen 4. Here's is my proposed ban list:

Arceus
Darkrai
Deoxys
Deoxys-e
Deoxys-f
Deoxys-l
Dialga
Giratina
Giratina-o
Groudon
Ho-oh
Kyogre
Latias
Latios
Lugia
Manaphy
Mew
Mewtwo
Palkia
Rayquaza
Shaymin-S
Wobbuffet
Wynaut

You'll notice that this is very similar to the current ban list on the standard ladder for SU except that Garchomp and Salamence aren't on it. I think it is useful to start with them in the game at the beginning of the fifth generation and see how things go. You'll notice that I left the other suspects on the banlist. Obviously that is a subjective determination I made... but given what I know about those guys I think that is probably right where they belong. The only one that had me on the fence somewhat was Latias... and she always felt a little forced in OU because the only way we could get her there was to ban her signature item soul dew. Obviously we can have some debate about the list... but I think this is a good start and helps us all notice how much we agree on the other Pokemon. :)

I also want to articulate how I'd like to see us approach the the question of tier changes when it comes to the fifth generation. To start, I want to get some goals in mind.

Goal 1: Our game is balanced enough that we enjoy playing it.

Goal 2: Our game is stable. This means that it is not subject to the threat of potential tier changes every few months on the OU/Uber border.

Goals that I do not have are the following:

Not Goal 1: We have a perfect tier list that yields the most balanced game possible.

Not Goal 2: We are as inclusive as possible of all Pokemon that can function in OU.

The reason that those are "not goals" is that they require immense amounts of testing, time, and frequent tier changes... which interferes with Goal 2. Articuno64's thread here gives some information that I think is very valuable when evaluating the above goals and not goals

Ok, now implementation stuff:

Assessing Goal 1 is rather simple even though it is a subjective determination. It is one of those "you know it when you see it" sort of things. The clearest example I can come up with from our history of an unbalanced game occurred when DX-S was allowed in the game and the dual screen lead became popular. Substantial consensus existed that it was a problem. In such cases, the necessary action is quite clear... toss out the offender. I don't think it is even necessary to have a protracted test and then a voter selection and then a vote. If it is obvious, just toss. I don't think this really happens much at all... but if it does, then I don't see any reason to waste much time on it. Notice, I could only imagine this happening in relation to a new B/W pokemon that we just obviously mis-tier in the beginning.

Assuming we've achieved Goal 1, I'd like to talk about Goal 2. Goal 2 relates to stability and how that is very, very important. I'd contend it is even more important than getting that one or two "wrongfully" banned Pokemon out of the Uber tier. I put "wrongfully" in quotes because, at the border, a lot of the Pokemon could probably go either way and things might be "fine" though they could be very different depending on the tier placement. These choices come down to taste and preference for game style, not a scientific truth or "correct" tiering that can be discovered through experiment or debate.

If that can be accepted, then I'd propose that we only consider convening a suspect test when a "disturbance" arises in the standard OU game. Notice, not every disturbance need result in a suspect test... only those disturbances that piss off enough people to revolt against the game as it stands (See Goal 1).

Disturbance defined: A disturbance arises when a new discovery, innovation, or Nintendo release dramatically alters the game by substantially improving the effectiveness of a Pokemon in a tier other than Uber.

Examples of disturbances that we've seen in recent history include the Yache Garchomp innovation, the expansion of the Salamence movepool to include both Outrage and Draco Meteor, the addition of Bullet Punch to Scizor's options, etc.

If we limit our use of suspect tests to cases where some change has occurred and our game is no longer fun, we accomplish the second goal of adding additional stability to the game without sacrificing the first goal of having a "balanced enough" and enjoyable game to play.

What do you guys think?

I don't think you read my post matty. You'll notice that I don't really suggest any provision for testing things that we decide to initially ban. I'm not suggesting anything like what we did in Gen 4... since I think on the whole it took way too long and resulted in a lot of frustration even though it ended up with a pretty good ban list. In fact, I'm almost attempting to eliminate the concept of "suspect" all-together in favor of the following framework:

1) If it is uber, it stays there and does not get a test
2) If it is OU, it stays there and does not get a test unless something changes (see: disturbance) that warrants further consideration.

The reason I like this framework is because I think a stable game is very important if people are going to actually enjoy it. Changing the rules every two months and having people constantly play under the threat of a rule change is not good business.

The reason that those are "not goals" is that they require immense amounts of testing, time, and frequent tier changes... which interferes with Goal 2. Articuno64's thread here gives some information that I think is very valuable when evaluating the above goals and not goals

Click to expand...

These don't require immense amount of time. They require immense amount of time if we make a giant and slow process for them. You can go from no bans to stable in a few months if you don't have arduous voting periods, constant controversy, and throwing out all the previous decisions with another "stage" of the test. If we really want to start with no bans and ban the obvious stuff quickly, we could just knock out the Arceus and Kyogre level stuff in a week tops, then make changes relatively quickly over time. There's no reason we _have_ to stick to a month long "test" on a separate ladder and then take 2 weeks to have a vote.

I also find it troubling that we don't even know what other Pokemon exist or what mechanics change and you want to essentially copy and paste the old ban list. Generations usually have major mechanics changes and being that presumptuous is arbitrary at best. What if weather changes significantly as a mechanic? What if the Ubers are only allowed up to level 70 or some strange limitation?

I agree with the sentiment proposed in the first post. Like Aeolus, I imagine that the only time a Pokemon will ever be "instantly banned" without a test or anything would be shortly after the metagame's development with one of the new BW Pokemon. It would be equivalent to a mistiering on our part, which is fine. I'd like to put forth that this should only be allowed at the beginning of the generation, and not later on.

Aeolus said:

1) If it is uber, it stays there and does not get a test

Click to expand...

I feel that if we're going to embrace this philosophy, we need to start with a smaller banlist for OU. If this is how we're going to start things off, I think we should just unban everything with a 600 BST or lower (Lati@s, Deoxys formes, Shaymin-S, Wobbuffet, Wynaut, Darkrai, Manaphy, Mew). That way we can use your above noted "automatic bans" to tier out the things that are completely broken early on in BW, but that we don't mis-tier something as Uber and then let it incorrectly stay there for the entirety of Gen 5.

That would make my proposed banlist:

Arceus
Dialga
Giratina
Giratina-o
Groudon
Ho-Oh
Kyogre
Lugia
Mewtwo
Palkia
Rayquaza

Pretty shallow, I know, but it covers all of big cover legends and doesn't assume anything is Uber without it having first been allowed in OU for players to interact with for awhile. This also agrees well with Articuno64's linked post in the OP that explains why we should only automatically tier consistent things, like the "Mewtwo"s of each generation.

Beyond that, I totally agree with the philosophy of:

If it is OU, it stays there and does not get a test unless something changes (see: disturbance) that warrants further consideration.

Click to expand...

If we're going to want to get all the testing out of the way as soon as possible, then we may as well start with everything in OU to begin with. Should something like the Deoxys-S Dual Screen set become very apparent that maybe it should go early, then I don't see why a thread couldn't be posted in PR discussing its tiering. Should it be agreed that it's uber, it can simply be removed from the ladder.

Moving on, looking at the proposed tier listing in the OP, I believe that the suspects from Gen 4 should be unbanned, along with another pokemon, leaving a shorter uber list.

Arceus
Darkrai
Deoxys
Deoxys-A
Dialga
Giratina
Giratina-o
Groudon
Ho-oh
Kyogre
Lugia
Mew
Mewtwo
Palkia
Rayquaza
Wobbuffet
Wynaut

Which means that I've removed the following:

Manaphy
Latias
Latios
Shaymin-S
Deoxys-S
Deoxys-D

Manaphy

The reason I removed Manaphy was because it was found to be generally overwhelming in the Stage 3-2 test. For those who don't remember, Manaphy's final vote was a landslide 100 OU to 27 Uber. For the most part, this was generally because Garchomp's presence restricted what Manaphy could accomplish while it was out. Once Garchomp went, opinions shifted drastically on Manaphy. With Garchomp coming back, I don't feel like Manaphy will cause as much as a stir as it did when it got banned.

Latias

Latias is definitely up there for candidate of "Gen 4 tiering demon". I feel that what Gen 5 brings might calm Latias more than what Gen 4 offered. For the most part, opinions on Latias are split fairly evenly. We're all aware of how it plays in battle, and I don't think that it's so good that it deserves to be banned straight away. I don't feel it's "forced" to put her in OU without her signature item. If there's no harm caused, then she might have a place there.

Latios

Latios is in a similar boat to Latias in terms of BST/typing/movepool etc. However, it was voted Uber by a close margin in Stage 2, yet was voted by a landslide in 3-1. Chances are it'll be voted uber, but I believe that it's better to start off with Latios than dispute it further down the line.

Shaymin-S

Shaymin-S was firstly voted Uber on a close 51% vote in Stage 2, and like Latios, was voted by uber by a landslide in 3-1. However, there never really has been a metagame with Garchomp, Skymin and Latias (Latios overshadowed it for all of 3-1). Garchomp was also absent during Skymin's Stage 2 test. Latias' special bulk might prove to be a good check to Skymin. Skymin's luck factor is extremely annoying I admit, and is likely the reason why many want Skymin gone, but then so is Jirachi's. Either way, it can be yanked out should it become apparent that it needs to be banned because it's overpowered, or that it makes the game unenjoyable for people to play.

Deoxys-S

It'll probably go within the first month, but it deserves some sort of a test. Who knows, there might be something in Gen 5 that stops the lead from being useful, while at the same time not being a liability by beating Deoxys-S and nothing else.

Deoxys-D

I think Deoxys-D kind of deserves a test after all this time. It's been largely ignored throughout Gen 4, probably because it can easily set up Spikes. However, I feel it should have a chance, and with all the new abilites such as Encourage and EarthquakeSpiral, might not that bad after all.

I only listed some points there, feel free to respond to them. The reason I left Wobbuffet, Deoxys, Deoxys-A, Darkrai and Mew out was because there seems to be a huge stance on "no" to them. Wynaut is on the fence, and there are ethics of "it destroys stall", so I'll leave that for another day. However, if we are to go with the "unban everything with a BST of 600 or lower" route, then they might should be considered an option too.

I think Aeolus' proposed banlist looks fine. The proposed "unbanned Pokemon" on Rising Dusk's list are:

Deoxys (all forms) (one form is the only pokemon that was so broken it got banned quickban-style INSIDE THE SUSPECT TEST, and another is a pokemon we refused to even test in this generation)
Wobbuffet/Wynaut (lol)
Latios/Latias (I'm with Aeolus that they always felt a bit "forced" with the Soul Dew ban)
Mew (why yes, i'd like to be able to baton pass anything to anything)
Manaphy (okay maybe)
Shaymin-S (i think this one got covered fully in this generation, and i can't imagine why it would be any better next generation)

Considering that the only things that *might* see the light of day are Shaymin-S (not likely), Manaphy (probably the only likely one), and Latias, is it really worth the time to try and sort through all 11 of these Pokemon at the beginning of B/W? If the aim is to have a balanced, playable, enjoyable metagame as quickly as possible, having to sort through 11 "proven offenders" seems absolutely counterintuitive of the remote possibility that one or two of them might make the cut. Again, we're not looking for "everything that can work" because that takes too much time and effort for not enough payoff.

EDIT: This also covers Nachos' proposed list. I'd like to remind everyone of "Not Goal 2". We're not trying to test everything that might work. We're trying to get things under control in a reasonable time frame, and sifting through Lati@s, Manaphy, Shaymin-S, Deoxys-S, and Deoxys-D just doesn't make sense.

This is probably obvious, but I want to make sure this is said so I dont get accused of not mentioning things at the appropriate times. But if there is reason to suspect the metagame has changed in a way to make one of the pokemon on the list less uber that we test it. For instance if next gen the type chart is changed so that Normal and Water resist Dragon or something..

And with that provision I dont see why we wouldnt start with the tierlist we have. Not that this would even really matter. Theorymon is strong enough to determine an initial banlist, if we just start out with a council after the first couple of weeks of playing and work from there..

Have a nice day.

For now, the banlist looks fine. However, we should remember that we don't yet know what 5th gen will introduce, and we should be ready to adapt to any major shifts.

I mostly agree with the OP. Over the years, people have talked about starting with everything unbanned, but I guess we have simply decided not to consider that kind of game the standard. The starting banlist should be seen as something of a definition that may need tweaking to fulfill the two goals. However, I'm also going to side with Rising_Dusk as far as the actual list goes.

It's pretty obvious that the people in charge of making stat spreads use BST as a "power" gauge. It's also pretty clear that there are Pokémon who are supposed to annihilate everything in their generation except maybe each other (and they succeed... not that we ever tested Palkia or whatever but yeah), because the BST gap between the 600s and the 670s is the biggest by far. So it's natural to make that gap the dividing line. (Of course, Regigigas and Slaking have debilitating abilities that lower their "effective" BST to relatively harmless levels.) This ensures that we take the most "natural" starting line possible, without outright assuming anything about the next generation.

P.S. I'm on the fence about Soul Dew shenanigans right now because one could argue that Tyranitar effectively has ~650 BST or something like that.

EDIT: OK, people seem to be going against Dusk's list because of Wobbuffet or whatever, but the point I think that he was trying to make (at least it was the point I was trying to make with this post) was that he was making an absolute starting list. Of course others that are "obvious" should be looked at immediately once a simulator is out and we have a feel for the new mechanics.

My previous post was mostly to see if the status quo changed (it hasn't) and to make sure "somebody said it". I can be pragmatic and accept we'll start with a ban list, but I still think we should be better safe than sorry and only ban the obvious shit (680+ that's not Slaking) and be willing to revisit anything that changes based on a mechanic (water resists dragon).

I also feel compelled to add that there is never harm in unbanning "Pokemon X" so if we don't go my route, which we probably won't, we shouldn't sweat the details over Pokemon X or Y.

There's basically two scenarios for the list being "too liberal" and including a Pokemon that gets banned early. Either it's obviously broken, in which case it gets banned quickly and there isn't exactly much of a reprecussion, or it's not obvious, in which case because it wasn't obvious it was beneficial for us to test it!

So if the list has only 670+ Pokemon on it and even if it includes Latios or Wobb or whoever, we should be able to quickly determine that "why it was banned before still applies now" once we get our hands on the metagame. If we can't quickly determine that, well, it deserved to be tested.

Rising_Dusk said:

I feel that if we're going to embrace this philosophy, we need to start with a smaller banlist for OU. If this is how we're going to start things off, I think we should just unban everything with a 600 BST or lower (Lati@s, Deoxys formes, Shaymin-S, Wobbuffet, Wynaut, Darkrai, Manaphy, Mew). That way we can use your above noted "automatic bans" to tier out the things that are completely broken early on in BW, but that we don't mis-tier something as Uber and then let it incorrectly stay there for the entirety of Gen 5.

Click to expand...

I agree entirely with this. If our tier lists are to be credible to the wider Pokemon population and we are not going to test ubers, we need to be able to show that we have not simply banned Pokemon which significant sections of the playerbase consider to be worth looking at on theorymon before the relevant competitive information is announced. These days, Smogon is still the premiere competitive site but it is far from the only popular one. The rest follow us because our tests are far more thorough than they could achieve. In my opinion it is essential for competitive Pokemon as a whole to maintain a single near-universally accepted standard ruleset. In order for our rules to continue to be accepted by almost every player, we need to show we are not pulling them out of thin air. It is important to make a stable metagame quickly, but it is equally important to make that metagame as good as we can in a short time.

The only possible exception from that list as I see it is Wobbuffet, but so long as we go by the "quick bans at the start" philosophy there is more to gain by including it in my opinion. Including it gives us a nice objective base from which to mount the quickbans: only the Pokemon with over 600 BST and no harmful ability are initially banned.

I would like to note that almost all competitive arguments based purely off fourth gen information are essentially useless. Even if there are only minor mechanics changes, and not as many hugely important moves are introduced as there have been every other generation, we are still looking at the introduction of a large number of effective Pokemon and a significant boost to the movepools of almost everything we already play with. The metagame as we now know it will not be relevant to 5th gen OU, and we should drop as many pre conceived ideas about it as we can (much like UUers had to drop ideas about old UU when obi's proposal came into force.).

Edit: To clarify, I would also be happy "no initial bans" metagame so long as we can stabilize it reasonably quickly. I think that the minimum required for a credible metagame is to allow all the 600 BST and lower Pokemon (with the possible exception of Wobbuffet) from the start.

Let me rephrase what I meant.

I agree that we should have a banlist of the "obvious" Ubers. Those that have been tested should be allowed. I think we can make rare exceptions to Deoxys-S and Wobbuffet. Shaymin-S is also "arguable" but I'll leave that out of the picture.

Don't even think about allowing Wobbuffet back in just because it doesn't fit in the 600 BST R_D; it is perhaps one of the worst Pokemon to deal with. Even worse than Garchomp w/Bright Powder in the sand.

I wanted to give some input on this. I just recently got badged so I know I'm not super-experienced in PR, but I think what I have to write is relevant to the topic.

In the OP, Aeolus mentioned two specific goals, which ultimately boil down to: a balanced and stable metagame. To this end, it was proposed that we ban several Pokemon right at the start of gen 5, most of them on the grounds of high BST and (probably) great movepools/abilities, and some of them due to existing tiering results. Ostensibly, this proposal will save time and avoid the hassles we went through to achieve our current metagame...but to what end?

Let's go back to our two goals for a second, and examine whether they're the only two goals we should be concerned with...because, in my opinion, the goals as laid out in the OP inherently support the "let's theoryban as much as possible" position over the "let's be careful about what we ban" position. Why? Because, given the metrics established, the consequences of what we call a "type I" error (banning a Pokemon that shouldn't be banned) is vastly more detrimental than the consequences of a "type II" error (not banning a Pokemon that should be banned). That is, not banning a broken Pokemon is weighted more heavily than banning a non-broken Pokemon, because the former has a substantial impact on stability and balance, while the latter has little or no impact on those.
I was always under the impression that our tiering process was a "innocent until proven guilty" type deal; however, adopting only the two goals in the OP without also including a caveat such as "we also want the most diverse metagame possible" is more conducive to a "guilty until proven innocent" system. Therefore, I think it's imperative that we make some consideration in our tiering guidelines for preserving the diversity of the metagame. Otherwise we could achieve perfect balance and stability just by banning anything remotely threatening, offensively or defensively.

There have also been other arguments brought up that I agree with, such as the argument that we cannot properly define disturbance, but mainly I believe we shouldn't be emphasizing balance over diversity to as great as degree as the OP recommends we do.

My proposal, then, is to start with a "tentative ubers" tier of only the 600+ BST giants. We have absolutely no idea what the first few months of the 5th gen metagame are going to be like, so I think we owe it to the playerbase to let them experiment with as much as possible before declaring that something is broken. The first few months, then, will essentially be a suspect ladder. After that's done, and we ban any Pokemon that are too powerful for the 5th gen metagame, we can be confident that our set of Ubers is much more accurate than a theory-banned Ubers tier would be, so we can implement the "if something is Uber it doesn't get retested without a disturbance" policy without any real issue.

Right now, whenever some noob comes in and asks us "hey why is x uber", we can say "because we went through a thorough, extensive testing process that involved the most prolific battlers in the community and decided as such". I'd like to preserve that integrity of process over expediting it.

I'd be ok with starting off banning BST 670+ with the exceptions of Regigigas and Slaking and letting all 600's into OU. The list in the OP is simply what I think would be best based on assumptions about mostly static game mechanics and I think it is likely that the ones I've listed will get kicked out relatively quickly... which doesn't waste much time. There is obvious value in having an objective line even it forces us to waste some time in the beginning and sacrifice a bit of stability since, again, people will get the impression that the tier list is more changeable than it is firm.

I'd be fine with only a banning of the BST 670s.

EDIT: And Wobbuffet. Fuck Wobbuffet.

Seven Deadly Sins in the other tiering topic said:

Community Nomination, Committee Decision

Basically, it would run similarly to how the UU test is run in that the community would decide on which Pokemon should be considered "suspect", and should be either bumped out of OU into Ubers or vice versa. The committee would parse these nominations, then make their decision based on their own opinions and those of the people who post nominations. When we talked, we decided it would probably be optimal to have the Policy Review-eligible posters do the nominating, to at least have a filter for the community writ large, but obviously there are other ways it could be handled.

The nominations would be opened up at regular intervals (1-2 months, though a special nomination could be called if something goes horribly wrong, I suppose), and at that time everyone capable of nominating has the option of doing so. The committee would be selected at the discretion of Aeolus and Jumpman16, and would as large as they saw fit (at this point, 9 people).

It has all of the ideas that we're going for:

Community involvement - While decisions are still "made" by the committee, the committee's actions will be dictated and heavily influenced by members of the community outside of the committee.
Less bureaucracy - No more "testing for a month, then running a bunch of stats and sifting through paragraph submissions just so we can vote on one Pokemon". Instead, it's a streamlined process where nominations are posted and then immediately decided on.
Less time - Decisions on the metagame in general would be made much faster than in the current system, since "testing periods" would effectively not exist.

Click to expand...

Aeolus said:

I'm generally fine with this... though I don't really want the periodic review. I want a stable tier list unless a problem arises. I say the community nom's when the gen first comes out... and we have an initial vote of the council to tier. After that, a review should only happen if there is an event or discovery that ruins things. There isn't really any need to convene every 4 or 8 weeks. As has been eloquently stated before, there is no "right" in the absolute sense when it comes to this stuff. Once a reasonable decision is made, people are welcome to accept it and adapt.

Click to expand...

Now that we have a council to take care of problems, I am fine with initially banning just the 670+ BST, plus Wobbuffet. Because this council shouldn't take more than, say, a week to ban a pokemon, if they play the ladder regularly, we can start of with these bans and still achieve a stable metagame within, say, 4 months.

Now, about Latios and Latias. I, personally, would like to see them in OU with Soul Dew. I don't like the idea of "Soul Dew Clause", and that's irrelevant, but if we're starting with a clean slate so to speak, then Lati@s deserves a chance.

First of all, I completely agree with the sentiments in the opening post. I think Aeolus has got the goals and reasoning down perfectly-- but then I'd expect no less. I always tend to agree with Aeolus on pragmatism . . .

On the other hand, I also agree with CIM about the fact that we can be more lenient without it becoming a horrible mess *cough*4thgen*cough* the admins have to clean up. All we need is a Council of respected members (who frankly, we can pick out with even less democracy than we did for Salamence) to fast-ban obvious problem pokemon. Give everyone a chance, but fast ruthless answer to offense. Easy in, easy out I want to say.


I want us to be as lenient as possible with the initial list-- especially since we really don't know about 5th Gen yet. We don't know the new pokemon, the new moves, nor the new mechanics if any. That said, I definitely think it's not too soon to start discussion-- if only to clear on the approach and early mindset we will take to the issue and to organize the process.


That said, I fully support the initial inclusion of:

-Salamence
-Garchomp
-Latias
-Latios
-Shaymin-S
-Manaphy
-Deoxys-S

In the initial metagame. I could talk about all of these individually, but I am sure others will, and frankly, I think the only one I need to talk about is Garchomp.

Garchomp is a pokemon I think we all would like to see given a second chance-- even Aeolus agreed in the OP that it would be one of the pokemon we let down to the new meta.

. . . but Garchomp is frankly, probably the very strongest of all the suspects.

I would be hard pressed to design a better pokemon than Garchomp with 600 BST. Well, I guess if you let me give it Magic Guard or Huge Power I could make it better but . . .

Dragon / Ground is arguably the best possible typing in the game for an offensive pokemon (another arguable one, for special attacker though, would be Water/Ground). Near-flawless STAB, incredible base power moves, great resistances to common attacks, only 2 weaknesses and immunity to Thunder Wave.

As for the Stat spread, there is very little you could do to make it better for the metagame. Garchomp has one of the highest attack scores to work with its STABs and just enough speed to out-run the vast bulk of the Metagame. By just hitting the minimum numbers needed to optimize its offensive prowess, its other points go to achieve defensive stats arguably better than Swampert's and enough Special Attack to destroy Skarmory with Fire Blast and even wreck some of its common counters with a gimmicky Draco Meteor (lol, chainchomp).

Movepool? Almost everything it could possibly want. Swords Dance to boost its Attack to insane levels (while it's already got the speed and bulk to sweep unboosted), all the STAB moves and Fire moves it could need, and to top it all off it even has Stealth Rock and Roar for a possible support set if it really wanted to (one arguably better than Swampert's). I guess Garchomp might want Dragon Dance or U-Turn but really . . . there's pretty much nothing Garchomp is wanting in movepool.

Compared to the beast that is described above, frankly (sans Soul Dew), none of the other suspects come close. Latias and Latios both have physical frailty and a bad secondary typing that make them somewhat more manageable. Deoxys-S dominated when everyone was using Suicide Leads, but in today's Anti-Lead driven metagame with lead priority moves ever, it's performance would be significantly different. Shaymin-S is frankly heavily hindered by SR, and lacks the power, coverage and defensive stats to truly be intimidating. Manaphy is . . . good (pure water is excellent), but not Garchomp good.


Even if we look at this from a game-design perspective, if we are trying to diversify the elements of metagame threats, Garchomp is the perhaps the least interesting on the whole list-- because of Flygon. Flygon gives every player the chance to use and abuse the best typing and STAB in the game, without the possible game-breaking beastliness. In comparison, Shaymin-S and Lati@s add something that truly does not exist in the current meta (albeit Azelf and other Waters provide similar options to Deoxys-S and Manaphy).


Anyway, just chiming in. I am fully in support of Garchomp and Salamence's inclusion in the initial B&W metagame. I just want consistency considering my strong feeling that none of the other suspects are as powerful or centralizing as Garchomp.

I think as long as we have the patience to wait and see what B&W does bring, and the assertiveness to create a system that takes swift and efficient action, we should be able to arrive at a very satisfactory ban list and enjoyable metagame with minimum grief.


Edit: What are people's thoughts on Darkrai? When some above posts say, "let down all 600's" I'm assuming we'd still keep Darkrai and the other Deoxys forms banned? It's all for the Council to decide really, but from a simple common sense process, I'd guess Darkrai and Deoxys-A are in a boat not all that different from Palkia. Someone with more Uber experience should definitely chime in though.

I pretty much agree with the above post. Obviously, if we're going to include Garchomp, which I consider the most powerful of the BL-Ubers tested during this generation, then we have to include the Lati twins an Manaphy as well, as they were way easier to deal with than the said Garchomp during stage 3. For the same reasons Salamence should be included as well.
These Pokemon were really controversial during Gen IV and deserve, in my opinion, an in-depth period of testing which should end up with a democratic voting procedure.

I'm not sure on Deoxys-S, though, as it's unlikely that Gen V introduces so many innovations that make it less broken under the support characteristic.

That being said I'm in support of a Salamence-like Council to decide the fate of the obviously broken 600+ base stats legendaries. If anything, we could charge the same persons who voted on Salamence for this job.

I think that we 600s people have the same general two points:

1. Banning all the 600+ Pokémon is close to what we want the banlist to be (assuming no one wants to start with everything unbanned).

2. There's too little information to call yet, but if we were to make a wild guess the list in the OP would probably be pretty close to the list before testing the controversial Pokémon.

So really, asking whether a certain case shouldn't be included in the 600+ list is probably missing the point.

As a competitive community, we will not be banning pokemon in a game that is not yet out. Once the game is out, it will still be some time before we actually know what it is like, and before it is implemented and playable. As such, I am closing this topic for lack of relevance.

Cathy and I had a chance to speak on IRC about a great many things and I think we actually ended up attaining some common ground. I agree with her than this discussion is better if it is delayed after more information about B/W is attained even if she and I disagree somewhat on the idea of an initial ban list.