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BW OU Diglett and Excadrill Suspect Discussion

on behalf of LuckOverSkill

BW has some problems that should have been addressed in the past (Latios) but never were, and instead of trying to deal with them now, we shifted our foucs to...Diglett and Trapinch. I'm not sure what went wrong here, but surely there are more pressing matters than banning LC mons.

I was writing a decently long post but my pc blue screen'd in the middle of it and it was too long and wordy anwyay, I hate writing long posts nowadays.

The gist of it was: remove Sand Rush Excadrill, free Dugtrio, and ban Latios.

The reason? Latios is broken as fuck, so is Excadrill with Sand Rush active (we banned this thing for a reason during BW1), it doesn't even remotely compare to other weather abusers, and has utility even without its trait (as proven by its other sets, whereas a mon like Kingdra is utter garbage without rain up). Latios is straight up too powerful and forces people to run Tyranitar so much, especially since there's also Magic Guard Psychics in the tier, but those can be beat by other means, unlike Latios, who abuses the state of the metagame so much that I find it baffling we're targeting Diglett instead.
 
Simplifying this vote to "banning Diglett" as an individual event is quite misguided. Realistically, this can be viewed as an updated definition of the Dugtrio ban. Both a Dug ban and an Arena Trap are passable within the restrictions of tiering (see gens 6 and 7), so the only question you need to ask is if you prefer a metagame with or without Diglett. It isn't about Diglett's true brokenness as an individual mon. It's about which definition of the Dugtrio/Arena ban makes the metagame more enjoyable. The council / bw community regrets not doing an Arena vote from the get-go and we now have the opportunity to fix that.
 
ABR said:
Simplifying this vote to "banning Diglett" as an individual event is quite misguided. Realistically, this can be viewed as an updated definition of the Dugtrio ban. Both a Dug ban and an Arena Trap are passable within the restrictions of tiering (see gens 6 and 7), so the only question you need to ask is if you prefer a metagame with or without Diglett. It isn't about Diglett's true brokenness as an individual mon. It's about which definition of the Dugtrio/Arena ban makes the metagame more enjoyable. The council / bw community regrets not doing an Arena vote from the get-go and we now have the opportunity to fix that.
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This is coming from a view of "Arena Trap is inherently uncompetitive/unhealthy/broken" right? Something that was touched on briefly in the OP is that Arena Trap is an objectively inferior ability to Shadow Tag. In Gens 6 and 7 there's no issue, both Shadow Tag and Arena Trap are banned in the order Shadow Tag -> Arena Trap so there was no point when an uncompetitive/unhealthy/broken ability was banned when an objectively better version of it was allowed.

I'm curious as to the reasoning why Arena Trap alone is being suspected because you definitely can't argue that Arena Trap is uncompetitive/unhealthy/broken inherently and claim that Shadow Tag isn't because, again, Shadow Tag is objectively superior as an ability. If it's an issue of Diglett or Trapinch using Arena Trap can trap and kill important Pokemon in a way that can be seen as uncompetitive/unhealthy/broken while Shadow Tag mons can't do the same then it should probably be a Diglett/Trapinch suspect in my eyes, and if not I'm interested in the reason why.
 
Merritt said:
This is coming from a view of "Arena Trap is inherently uncompetitive/unhealthy/broken" right? Something that was touched on briefly in the OP is that Arena Trap is an objectively inferior ability to Shadow Tag. In Gens 6 and 7 there's no issue, both Shadow Tag and Arena Trap are banned in the order Shadow Tag -> Arena Trap so there was no point when an uncompetitive/unhealthy/broken ability was banned when an objectively better version of it was allowed.

I'm curious as to the reasoning why Arena Trap alone is being suspected because you definitely can't argue that Arena Trap is uncompetitive/unhealthy/broken inherently and claim that Shadow Tag isn't because, again, Shadow Tag is objectively superior as an ability. If it's an issue of Diglett or Trapinch using Arena Trap can trap and kill important Pokemon in a way that can be seen as uncompetitive/unhealthy/broken while Shadow Tag mons can't do the same then it should probably be a Diglett/Trapinch suspect in my eyes, and if not I'm interested in the reason why.
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If banning stag on top of this is what enables the vote then I'm perfectly okay with that too.

The argument for banning abilities doesn't need to relate fully to something inherent or theoretical. So, we still look at it in the context of a metagame. Arena Trap is more of an issue than Shadow Tag in bw ou (at least especially with dug around), so we target the specific issue. Yes, it was all Dugtrio and not Diglett, but we can still extend what defines Dugtrio in this case. Arena Trap's broken mon count is >0 while Shadow Tag's is probably 0. I know this is some inbetween you don't see fitting but it can definitely pass as suitable.

If you and others are still not convinced we should move forward with a Shadow Tag ban.
 
i agree with the arena trap ban due to the reasons provided by ABR (and others): it fully makes sense to "update the dugtrio ban definition" to be more consistent with other /similar/ gens (ORAS and SM) by banning arena trap. i think it also makes sense for this to extend to shadow tag, as i think it has been proven time and time again that wide scale trapping abilities (arena trap and stag) are fundamentally uncompetitive. i'm not using this as a buzzword but rather, as a shortcut to summarize the countless arguments over many other threads about this issue in the "main" (stours) gens.

with that said, i also think there needs to be some type of upper level check to egregious tiering decisions in old gens. i don't know if it's worth making a new thread for this yet because this has really only been an issue with BW (and i guess that thing with latias in DPP). banning uncompetitive elements that have little collateral and/or refining tiering policies (such as banning arena trap instead of just dugtrio) to be more consistent are valid, but seeing discussion of banning permanent weather, keldeo, latios, magnezone, etc. and potentially unbanning chlorophyll in an old gen is just absurd. once a generation becomes an "old gen," it starts to develop and adapt much more slowly. this isn't to say that changes completely stop; rather, the generation having a sharp decline in playerbase and metagaming community leads to innovations happening really slowly. unlike with current gen OU and lower tiers, there is a dearth of resources, discussion, ladder play, etc. when BIG changes happen, it can be hard for a meta to settle at a good enough pace.

banning arena trap (and stag) have little collateral, making them fully justified imo. discussion about unbanning chloro, banning keldeo, etc. is just crazy. one that is ambiguous though is banning sand rush on excadrill. while this isn't the point of this thread, i think this concern isn't as clear cut as others, making it worth discussion. IF discussion happens, however, i think it should be handled a bit better, with ample time for people to respond before a vote is called.

oh also, people who qualify to vote in these things who don't have a badge should 100% be given perms to post here.

edit: for some background, i've been playing a lot of bw the past few months (mostly with friends), and i think it's a really great tier. it is rather balanced... just in a different way than most tiers with how centralized it is with things like permanent weather, latios, etc. i haven't run into much stag or arena trap (diglett) personally since they don't see crazy high usage or anything, but i've seen enough to be convinced that the metagame would be healthier and more balanced with their exclusion. as for excadrill, sand rush is a huge pain to deal with, but it's honestly not the end of the world and leads to some intense games in sand vs. rain + excadrill mus, adding another layer of play with weather strategies and whatnot.
 
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Genuine question: how does banning Sand Rush not actively contradict the tiering precedent established with Blaziken several years ago? Unlike Arena Trap, where you have a clear justification that the ability itself is uncompetitive, there's no serious argument to be made that Sand Rush as a whole is an issue--Excadrill is the sole problematic case. Even within the context of the Dugtrio ban less than six months ago, we first opted to ban the problematic mon before seriously discussing Arena Trap--and I really don't see why the same logic shouldn't apply here. I'd welcome a serious explanation as to why it apparently does not.

"The meta is more varied" and "we wanted to switch things away from repetitive spikes/Reuni offense" are not valid reasons to remove Sand Rush over Exca. If anyone wants to bring them up, please note a line from Kevin's earlier post:
BKC said:
"Boring" doesn't mean anything. Metagames always have the same best Pokemon used the most. Trying to fix this with bans lasts for a short amount of time before the meta's figured out and the problem pops up again. I also don't see how it's unbalanced - because certain things are stronger than others? That's just the way of the land, how metagames tend to work.
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I don't pretend to be a BW aficionado anymore, and as such have no strong opinion on whether Exca should stay, but as of now both do nothing and outright ban Exca seem like they're far more in-line with past BW tiering decisions than "neuter Exca but don't actually ban it." I'm aware that it's a bit unsettling to have small councils pushing for changes that completely redefine old metagames, but I'd rather do that then overrule major precedents that defined oldgen tiering policies.
 
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Finchinator said:
SPL 5 and SPL 6 happened 4-5 years ago. Both of those statistics are irrelevant and if you even try to spin it otherwise then any credibility your argument has is completely lost. STour 25 had Dugtrio banned in the middle of it and the stats never got fully finished, so that stat is irrelevant and you're basically using it to paint a highly misleading point if you knew this at all. The fact that you cited these three statistics is more laughable than it is informative or helpful to your point. Please refrain from posting if you are not going to be informed beforehand. This is how threads get derailed.
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Though I see your attempt to take this personally, I'm going to take the high road.

"SPL 5 and 6 happened 4-5 years ago" - Yes that was the last time Venusaur was legal, what other statistics would I be using? Venusaur should have never been banned to begin with, you realize that to be successful Venusaur needs an entire team to support it? Its not like a Volcarona that can just Quiver Dance and 6-0 teams.

"STour25 had Dugtrio banned in the middle" - From what I remember Dugtrio was banned after the first cycle, so Diglett was used in the last two cycles of BW tours. You can do the math for yourself if you want to increase Diglett's usage by 1.33x, that doesn't change its win rate of 50%.

"The fact that you cited these three statistics is more laughable that it is informative to your point" - Again, your response to me fails to derail my argument. I cited three relevant statistics, and your response was, "they are old" and "dugtrio was banned in cycle 1"

Don't tell me to refrain from posting if you can't respond to me to help me change my opinion. Please, let me apologize for listening to my friends and voicing their opinion while you voice the opinion of this council.
 
Ban (18): Blunder, Finchinator, Luigi, Ace-11, obii, Posho, bro fist, SoulWind, TDK, BKC, ABR, Empo, Lycans, McMeghan, soTsoT, Souf, Kebab mlml, Jimmy Turtwig
Do Not Ban (6): Elodin, Googly, Smurf, Sam I Yam, LuckOverSkill, Tricking

Therefore, Arena Trap will be banned from BW OU. In addition, Dugtrio is now unbanned in BW OU. Arena Trap received 18 of 24 ban votes from people who actually voted (19 people refrained from voting, which we will treat as abstaining much like prior tests). This is 75% in favor of banning Arena Trap, which surpassed the necessary threshold of 60%. Do note that this ban is effective immediately (meaning that any new tournaments or rounds starting after now with BW OU in them will no longer allow Arena Trap in BW OU games).
 
For the sake of transparency can you clarify what the comments were if any from the people who refrained from voting, if they were specifically abstentions, etc. Or if anyone in that camp wants to comment.

19/43 voting members not bring a part of the vote is a pretty significant portion of the originally determined voting pool and if there are representative concerns based on that could be cause to reevaluate the voting pool criteria.

Edit: if we were to take the usual standards for quorum among a voting body at 50%+1 then the voting pool as stands is sufficient but it would be raised to the council if they see that value as sufficient or would prefer a more complete representation.
 
I did not receive a PM from any of those 19 individuals on the forums stating their vote. The vote of a number of them could be implied, but it would not change the ultimate result and given that I did not receive a proper vote, I did not want to include them as that did not feel proper or fair to those who voted properly.

There is precedent for this dating back to the old Excadrill vote, where Jayde voted ~15 minutes late and if his vote was counted then the result would be different. However, he did not vote on time and we could not count it. In each BW test since the council was formed, we have simply not counted anyone who refrained from voting.
 
Texas Cloverleaf said:
I'm not concerned with precedent I'm concerned with whether you (the council) feels this is a sufficient sample size to represent the tier in the vote on this issue.
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I cannot speak for the entire council in saying this, but personally I do. If it was up to me, I'd have the criteria be far more strict as opposed to anything else at this point. Given the measures we took and the votes we received, I am content with this end result and I feel that it represents the clear majority sentiment of the playerbase.
 
We are going to be acting on Excadrill in some capacity in the near future. I am not entirely sure as to precisely when we will do so, but do note that a vote will occur and it is not a straightforward matter, so we are open to discussion here atm. There is Excadrill itself and also the controversial topic of Sand Rush (potentially leading into weather speed boosting abilities as a whole). I am not positive what is exactly on or off the table at this moment in time, but I do know that any input we received in the exit polls we will take into consideration as well as any information posted in this thread (assuming it is done so seriously and with good reasoning). Consider this thread open for discussion on the vague topic of Excadrill and a prospective future suspect for the remainder of the week. You have been warned now, so post now or forever hold your peace!
 
Hey
Id like to spark some discussion in here over what should be suspected. Ive seen a lot of people asking for sand rush itself to be banned, but i believe that would be a mistake. We already banned speed boosting abilities+perma weather, and now a non broken ability (only exca with sand rush active is broken) is on the suspect radar?
I firmly believe excadrill should be the one being suspected. The only reason people want sand rush banned is because "excadril brings good things to the tier", but we're going to be inconsistent with our tiering because of that? (Blaziken got banned cause blaziken+speed boost was broken)
I don't like this idea of making suspects under what we like, suspects should only be what is effectively broken (in this casecase excadril, sand rush itself isnt broken and already got a nerf lol) and keeps the consistency of previous decisions. Id like to hear other arguments than "we like exca pls no ban" for the sand rush ban before going into suspecting it.

Also, maybe this time people should post in here stating their oppinion over what should be done before waiting till a decision is made, lol. Discussion promotes good suspects after all, not waiting till action is made to then bitch about it
 
Regardless of what's determined to be the ideal approach it should definitely be specific / traditional rather than a runoff vote.

As for those specifics, it should absolutely not be Excadrill as a whole. To put it bluntly, the overall impact of banning Excadrill would be negative. If rush variants are the problematic ones then we have routes to take (I'll get to that more below), but if not then it shouldn't be touched at all because removing hazards on non-rain teams would become literally impossible and it'd get all the more difficult on rain too. The other drills, mold and force, are also overwhelmingly not broken at all.

Now, under no circumstances am i advocating for the complex ban of "Sand Rush Excadrill." We obviously don't do that. However, if the current setup is banning the combination of weather ability + weather speed ability for all weathers, then shifting this to simply banning the weather speed abilities is a step in the direction of simplification. Physically, our current banlist is "sand stream + sand rus; drizzle + swift swim; drought + chlorophyll." If we view Sand Rush Excadrill to be problematic, we can simply redefine this banlist to "sand rush; swift swim; chlorophyll." This isn't complex banning a specific form of Excadrill, rather redefining the current setup in a more simple way to get rid of something we view to be problematic (if we do).

One retort to this I've seen thrown around is that stuff like Stoutland or Kingdra outside of rain isn't broken. The issue with this is that it has a limited and immediate scope rather than viewing the overall tier's banlist. If you're looking at BW tiering and weather from a holistic view, countless mons with "weather speed abilities" have proven to be problematic. The various swimmers, drill in sand, venu and whatever else in sun - they all have proven to be problematic over time. Via this, we can simply define the common denominator of their brokenness to be the 2x weather speed abilities, that's it.

While technically an overall Excadrill ban is allowable, as is the weather speed ban, we need to look at pros and cons in terms of practical effect. An Excadrill ban would enable Stoutland. A weather speed ban enables/maintains mold and force variants of Excadrill. It should be overwhelmingly clear to everyone that these Excadrill variants do more good for the tier than stoutland would. Regarding both practical effect as well as the simplicity of the overall BW banlist, the option of banning weather speed abilities is very clearly superior.

In the most simple of terms, if we are to do something, we should change the current ban of "sand stream + sand rush; drizzle + swift swim; drought + chlorophyll" to "sand rush; swift swim; chlorophyll."
 
Smogon should be banning Pokémon except in cases where a non-Pokemon element is broken or non competitive on all (or at the very least many) Pokemon with the element.

The complex drizzleswim ban handled this “well,” albeit controversially, since more than just Kingdra was broken in rain. This one complex ban enabled many Pokemon to remain free. The same can maybe be said about chlorodrought with both venusaur and victreebel. However, stoutland has never been broken in BW. Only Excadrill. It was a mistake to handle sand stream+sand rush the same as the others. The only reason was appearance of consistency (not actual consistency, since, again... only exca was broken, not stoutland.)

Taking a further step to ban these weather speed boosting abilities as a whole that are not even always broken in combination with their logical pair and certainly never broken on their own is utterly ridiculous and would be the largest departure yet from traditional smogon tiering philosophy.

tl;dr, free stoutland, remove streamrush ban, ban exca
 
Bughouse said:
Smogon should be banning Pokémon except in cases where a non-Pokemon element is broken or non competitive on all (or at the very least many) Pokemon with the element.

The complex drizzleswim ban handled this “well,” albeit controversially, since more than just Kingdra was broken in rain. This one complex ban enabled many Pokemon to remain free. The same can maybe be said about chlorodrought with both venusaur and victreebel. However, stoutland has never been broken in BW. Only Excadrill. It was a mistake to handle sand stream+sand rush the same as the others. The only reason was appearance of consistency (not actual consistency, since, again... only exca was broken, not stoutland.)

Taking a further step to ban these weather speed boosting abilities as a whole that are not even always broken in combination with their logical pair and certainly never broken on their own is utterly ridiculous and would be the largest departure yet from traditional smogon tiering philosophy.

tl;dr, free stoutland, remove streamrush ban, ban exca
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Talking about said abilities like Sand Rush "on their own" is a misguided point of view. While Sand Rush Excadrill may not be broken outside of sand, this does not mean it has to be alongside a Sand Stream pokemon to be broken, practically or philosophically. It's more appropriate to view it as "Sand is frequently a field effect in the BW metagame (this isn't changing), and thus the frequent +2 speed is broken." To broaden it to include the other abilities, BW tiering can be viewed as "Weather of different types in a permanent state is ubiquitous, thus any ability granting +2 speed in weather is broken." The very fact that the current parallel/neat banlist is enabled means surely a more simplified version of it is enabled.

Because both approaches are permissible (rush and drill) the only question remaining is preference. I'll go even further and say that a rush ban is even more preferable on the idealistic front than a drill ban. Our options for BW banlists are:

1) Drizzle + Swift Swim; Drought + Chlorophyll; Excadrill

2) Swift Swim; Chlorophyll; Sand Rush

You tell me which one is more simple.

If an overall Sand Rush vote is off the table then I vehemently oppose an Excadrill vote on the basis of metagame impact as well as the philosophy behind BW's banlist. It would be a terrible mistake.
 
i'm speaking as an individual, not for the council, but i believe in my marrow that banning excadrill would be a sorely misguided decision. i'm not interested in the semantic arguments abt tiering consistencies & logics. at the end of the day, our process is rulebook which we try to abide by for formality. that doesn't mean that precedent is an end-all-be-all.

bw was and is a generation which was the litmus for generating our ideological positions on mechanics. 'precedent' didn't exist. we created it ourselves. it is a hugely experimental tier that has been through the fucking wringer. permanent weather and team preview drastically changed how pokemon was played as a whole. we can see how hard it was for smogon to reckon with such substantial shifts. i would argue that bw ushered in an era of normalizing a new level of power which was unprecedented in smogon history. oras and sm's very conservative tiering is a reflection of how we, for better or worse, tacitly agreed how strong ou should be in gen5.

this is all to say that we, the council and bw playerbase, are at an impasse. my opinions have gradually shifted because i've come to realize that bw is an imperfect tier. and that's the beauty of it. no matter how you think decisions should have turned out or how we could have done xyz in the past, our iteration of bw right now is probably the best it has been in years. excadrill's utility has vastly expanded viable team archetypes, helped dismantle an even more boring spikes psychic hegemony, and made the tier less linear.

it's really hard operating in a council whose stigma arises not only from our own faults, but from a historical legacy of a generation full of question marks. we could have banned keldeo. we could have banned latios. we could have banned politoed. we could have done lots of things. but herein lies the problem: we can't now. it's too late, we don't have the means to test or do so without heavy scrutiny and eschewing 'the process', and we would have to try a LOT of things to figure out some "ideal" way of tiering this shit.

at some point, radical old gen tiering becomes an impossibility. minimal interests, a small playerbase, and divided care are put into old generations, with lots of us feeling disenfranchised because we have an investment in it. it's really weird to me how everyone has an issue with banning diglett, which, mind you, cheesed itself to countless wins in the bw cup and parallels every other trapping ban in oras/sm. it's a minor takeaway from the tier--an incredibly volatile cheesemon that seeks to win from matchup, that has people throwing fits? haha.

i'm kind of getting off base at this point, but i really want to highlight that this is a generation which has adopted a certain framework and it's something we're stuck with. look, tyranitar is an integral part of bw because latios and rain are. rain isn't going anywhere even if it has caused so many questionable other bans. we have accepted that weather is an identity of the generation because we can't do anything else because it's too late. we are just trying to do the best with what we have. a sand rush ban might not align with the Smogon Policy Buffs That Don't Actually Play The Tier But Want To Posture As Intellectual Gamers, but goddamnit it's the best thing to do with what we can do. excadrill leaving would be a huge step back to a bw of 3 years ago where we saw even less diversity and more alakazam speed ties.
 
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basically the summary of my smogtours discord rant:

cherubi is an lc pokemon with 275 bst who has probably never been used in spl, ever, in lc or especially any other tier. aka it has not proven itself to be broken. but, it has chlorophyll as its only ability therefore it should be banned, i guess?

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...-abilities-in-dpp.3597155/page-2#post-7299096

there is a direct precedent of making sure this doesn't happen. i do not see why we should ban an lc mon for a different ability making a different mon broken. im not saying you shouldnt go through with an exca nerf im saying this should be kept in mind. i prefer a sand rush ban (nerfing other mons because of a different ability on 1 mon being broken is dumb) but if not just use the dpp one, which actually has any sort of precedent.

tldr dont ban cherubi but idc what else is done

edit: if sand rush is banned then BROKEN sandslash will be banned bc it cant use sand veil or sand rush. we should definitely ban sandslash over excadrill though, because i think a drill meta is more fun and i like it more!!
 
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dice said:
at some point, radical old gen tiering becomes an impossibility. minimal interests, a small playerbase, and divided care are put into old generations, with lots of us feeling disenfranchised because we have an investment in it. it's really weird to me how everyone has an issue with banning diglett, which, mind you, cheesed itself to countless wins in the bw cup and parallels every other trapping ban in oras/sm. it's a minor takeaway from the tier--an incredibly volatile cheesemon that seeks to win from matchup, that has people throwing fits? haha.
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The whole "minor takeaway" argument can be used for just about anything. There's countless "cheese" Pokemon and strategies in the tier that could be removed without causing harm, but ordinarily they don't get suspected or banned unless they are of real relevance. Do you think anyone will miss Wobbuffet, Liepard, Riolu, or King's Rock Cloyster if you ban them? Of course not. It's not that people care about not being able to use Diglett anymore (except maybe Googly), it's that a tier with so many unhealthy and borderline broken Pokemon is suspecting something of hardly any importance instead of a more credible threat.

Even the one Pokemon who actually will be getting suspected, Excadrill, was deemed a lower priority than Diglett was, despite Diglett's complete lack of versatility as well as its incredibly low usage of 10/758 in Smogon Tour and 1/64 in World Cup. Compare that to Excadrill, who legitimately has more than 10x the usage Diglett does and is widely regarded as an A+ or even S Rank mon in the tier. Now consider all the others in the same category as Excadrill, such as Latios, Keldeo, and, perhaps only formerly now, Garchomp. Even if it's not the Council at fault for this inability to suspect good mons, there's clearly an issue with the overall tiering process if only Volatile Cheesemons can be looked at. Perhaps this is the real issue that the Smogon Policy Buffs need to sort out.

More on topic, banning Sand Rush wouldn't be straying any further away from traditional bans than where we're already at right now. In fact, I'd argue it would actually be more in line with traditional bans as there would no longer be any ridiculous combination ban that's only in place for the same reason that the Sand Rush ban would be there for (nerfing Excadrill). Changing the weather combination bans into simple weather speed boosting ability bans would clear up the ban list while simultaneously giving people the version of Excadrill they desire. It's basically win-win. You don't even have to apply it to Sun/Rain if you Really want to keep Cherubi, although finally undoing Aldaron's Proposal would be pretty nice.
 
Look, if the goal of banning the speed boosting abilities is to finally clean up aldaron’s compromise, then you should instead ban the actually broken part of the weather clusterfuck that is BW, which is the weather setting abilities. But I know we’ve always been too chicken to do that and this is pretty much the definition of too radical a change.

Banning the speed boosting abilities in isolation however is unacceptable. Sand teams should need to take into account opposing Excadrill, and rain teams opposing kingdra. It’s one of the only things that makes using a weather potentially risky, which is an important counterbalance to how utterly OP permaweather is in this generation, due to years of not addressing it directly.
 
Proxy posting on behalf of LuckOverSkill:

I feel like the newer gens impacted BW tiering way too much, when we were still in BW1, all the bans done made perfect sense: Swift Swim Pokémon were stupid as fuck, so we ended up with Aldaron's proposal, Excadrill was about as stupid, so we banned Excadrill, Sun was fine and Chloro sweepers were allowed. Everyone loved BW1 (aside from the hardcore haters but those don't count, they'd have the gen they play if it had another name). Then BW2 happened, we got rid of the biggest problems (Tornadus-T and Genesect), we suspected Keldeo twice, and twice it survived the vote, we unbanned Garchomp because Rough Skin was released, Landorus-T was a great addition, and overall the quality of the meta was still pretty high I'd say. And then we got to 2015, when we decided that sun was too powerful after yet another show of sun performing just like it always did: slightly above average, since it's mostly seen as a counterpick kind of team. Nobody in the history of BW has ever played Sun extensively (except Ohmachi, rest in peace brother), because the playstyle was always volatile.

It's still beyond me how a tier that's been relatively fine before 2015 got turned over its head seemingly randomly, even when it wasn't the main gen anymore, and then after a couple more years people decided to screw with it even more...it's a bit ridicolous, and I fail to see the benefits of what's been done in these years.

This whole talk of Dugtrio being "cheese" because it kills certain mons and then Sun is allowed to do whatever it wants (more specifically Cresselia, and Venusaur back in the days)...the same could be said for DragMag. Magnezone traps your Steel(s)? Tough luck, have fun dealing with 3 dragons. And the counterpoint is always "yeah but you can still beat dragons by other means", guess what, there's ways to beat sun too, as showcased in SPL, but it was arbitrarily decided that Sun was "gimmicky and cheesy" unlike other playstyles that operate under literally the same premise, and have had comparable winrate over the past. I'd go as far as saying that the only real difference is the perception of losing vs Cresselia compared to losing to dragons. One is quick and "painless", the other one is an uphill struggle where it feels you were very close to killing Cress until it found 1 free turn to recover 66% of its health.

The whole tiering of BW that's happened after XY has been out for more than a year never felt very rational. Maybe because it's always been done within a small circle of players, but it is baffling how the tier has been handled over the course of the years, I really really don't want to say people are incompetent at tiering, BW's tiering has never been dealt with competently if you were around, mostly because it was the first real tiering experiment on a large scale operated by Smogon, which is perfectly understandable, I don't blame people for not knowing how to deal with stuff they never dealt with before, I'm just saying that all things considered the result was a success, the tier was enjoyable (maybe not perfectly balanced, but that hasn't been a thing since GSC), all the crazy powerful stuff had counterplay, and it still has counterplay. Maybe the counterplay doesn't involve having switchins (looking at you Hydreigon), but I like to see BW as the tier where both players bring unfair things, and by virtue of bringing unfair, both players have good chances to win.

So yes, I am 100% serious when I say: bring BW back to the stage of having DrizzleSwim banned, Excadrill banned, Dugtrio and Chlorophyll allowed. And stop playing with it as if it was some experimental ground, it's already done its job 5 years ago in that regard.
 
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