Banning Items Is Flawed

[glisgarnite10]

This is a post specifically about damp rock.

I have been playing PS for over a decade. I cannot remember any tier ever banning an item. Banning damp rock is stupid and I think it should be undone. Banning an item that makes an entire playstyle unusable is shortsighted.

I read through the council's reasonings. I think the most hard-pressed, who's thought about it most, seems to be asa who says:

"
Speaking of rain, it has too many good tools right now imo. Drednaw and Kingdra pretty easily put holes in teams and aren't easy to revenge kill under rain, Kilowattrel and Tornadus get to spam Thunder/Hurricane + Weather Ball without much drawback, and there's even other stuff like Tauros-W and Qwilfish-H to get past Goodra, Bronzong, and Wo-Chien. Banning Damp Rock is probably the logical solution, since I'd argue none of the rain breakers/sweepers feel problematic yet except Drednaw.
"

So, I don't think this is solid reasoning. If Drednaw/Kingdra put holes in teams, ban them. If Thunder/Hurricane spamming from Kilo and Torn is too op, ban them. Let's not forget it was not that long ago all of these 'mons were NU. You say banning damp rock is logical but I disagree. It seems lazier than anything else.

But yeah no other explanation was satisfactory either. Every reason sounds like variations of 'rain is too good.' Which is lazy and frankly kind of ridiculous? Idk maybe that's just the extent of effort put into these kinda explanations, I made this account to bring up this ban in particular, but banning an entire item seems unfair, and again, shortsighted.

If there are too many threats on rain teams, ban the threats. You are banning 'mons like every week so why not just ban Kingdra, Torn, etc, all the ones you call out? Rain isn't perfect and can be played around. It has a lot of flaws, and it had more before any of the drops you mention showed up in PU. The moves are pretty predictable for the most part. But banning damp rock instead of banning the mons you have a problem with removes a flavor from an already bland dish. What about Golduck? What about Ludicolo, or Beartic, or basically any of the trash mons that have swift swim? You snub them with this decision.

My opinion is that the council should undo this ban on damp rock and instead ban the 'mons they find most problematic. Rain can be countered. Maybe it has too many tools. But then look at which of the most problematic mons are used most exclusively on rain teams, and ban them. Frick I mean rain is fun to play.

It was fun to play before any of the mons you mention as problems showed up and banning the entire playstyle, essentially, is really obnoxious.

 

[Catcus]

light clay has been banned in multiple tiers so there is precedent for tiers banning items plus I pretty sure you're supposed to post this in the metagame discussion thread

 

[ishtar]

Hello, I will address this post before locking this thread, but please follow the forum rules if you have any concern of this nature for future reference.

While item bans are often disallowed, the ban of Damp Rock as well as other weather related items has had multiple amounts of precedent through lower tiers. I even talked to shiloh about this before going ahead with the vote since I wanted to make sure at a 100% that I wasn't going against tiering policy through this decision, but as its been obviously shown through this vote, it worked out.

I won't name the myriad of examples of items being banned from lower tiers across the generations which include all of the weather items, Light Clay, even Quick Claw in this current gen, but the precedent that exists for weather being problematic in lower tiers lead to this decision. Now to answer your other inquiry in regards to banning all problematic elements of rain but leave Damp Rock untouched, think about the amount of Pokemon that were named in asa's post, and notice how the loss of all of those Pokemon would influence the meta in much major ways than removing a toxic archetype such as rain. Getting rid of mons like Kingdra, Kilowattrel, Tornadus, etc., for the sake of rain existing is even more damaging to all playstyles, creates a meta with much less individual variety, and inflates the PUBL list significantly for the sake of saving an archetype just cuz its "fun to play". "Let's remove the clearly uncompetitive element that makes these mons potentially problematic for the sake of a healthier, more diverse meta", this is how we came to this decision. Hope this helps in explaining our reasoning. also get owned asa, step down

Locking this thread now, if you have any other questions regarding this decision or would like to discuss it, feel free to join the Discord or talk to me individually.