shiloh
Tiering Lead
To start with, these are the changes that have occured due to usage shifts:
Gastrodon moved from NU to RU
Golisopod moved from NU to RU
Roserade moved from PUBL to RU
Entei moved from RU to NU
Glastrier moved from RU to NU
The council will be having discussions right away on the new drops, as with NU Open currently ongoing it is in our best interest to take action if needed as soon as possible. Along with that, the results of the vote on Hail have come in, and they are as such:
Due to Snow Warning receiving a 50%+ majority in the 1st choice of voting, Snow Warning will be banned from NU effective immediately.
Snow Warning/Hail Based teams have been dominating the ladder over the past couple months, and have only gotten better as a result from the suspect tests held over the past couple of months. This is mainly due to one of the best forms of Hail counterplay in Scarf Mienshao being banned, and opening up the speed tiers for Arctovish to plow through teams even more than it already did before. With the help of instant weather from Snow Warning mons, Vish, and Sandslash, were able to come in multiple times throughout the game and punish switchins with strong attacks. There is very little in the metagame that wants to switch into Fishious Rend in the first place, but even less can come in to other moves like Freeze-Dry. Overall Hail became a very dominating structure, and as such the council took action and voted to ban Snow Warning.
The other side to this suspect test was deciding what to do when it comes to Banning Snow Warning or Arctovish, as there were good arguments from both sides. However, in the end a majority of council did support a ban of Snow Warning. This mainly stems from the fact that NU at this point has attempted to stifle hail archetypes 3 separate times over this generation, with bans on Aurora Veil, Arctozolt, and potentially now Arctovish. This post from Ren-chon covers a lot of what council believes, and the reasoning behind why many voted the way they did.
Also just to cover these because they did pop up a couple of times, and Id' rather not have the thread/room clogged up on discussion about this in the future: Why did we not consider Slush Rush/Icy Rock bans. For the more obvious one, Icy Rock. For tiering purposes we always look towards what the least complex/intrusive ban possible is when coming to a decision, and most of the time it can fall under a certain framework. We prefer to Ban Pokemon First, Abilities Second, Items Third, and Moves Fourth. Icy Rock at this point in time is not considered for the ban because it is just a more intrusive way to solve the issue. While it might be a simple ban, it really does not address what the true issue with Hail is, and why the teams are as good as they are. While it may be an enabler, it is not at the level of Snow Warning, or even the abusers themselves to be considered. Slush Rush is a bit more fair, but it is an ability that is solely based on Snow Warning, and it would have the same collateral that Snow Warning would have with PU, in terms of policy. Slush Rush also is only the common link in 2/3 of the hail related bans, and as such is a less ideal aspect to be tested compared to Snow Warning.
Also as a result of this: Arctozolt and Aurora Veil will both also be unbanned from NU. Tagging Kris and Marty to implement (Ban Snow Warning/Unban Arctozolt+Aurora Veil)
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Feel free to use this thread to discuss the metagame, and especially the new drops as the council will be evaluating both of them soon!