I feel like, in the responses to my post, the nuance of my arguments has been lost. I will do my best to restore that with a point by point analysis.
You say that Dynamax is unhealthy because it is accessible to both players in response to me, but that is missing the point. I am saying in this quote merely that Dynamax doesn't place the same type of teambuilding restrictions that individual mons might.
Unsurprisingly, when new mechanics are introduced, many of the bans relate to the ability to interact with the new mechanic. Many bans in gen 6 were megas or about the ability of pokemon to interact with megas in a given context (rachi azu probably wouldn't have been as strong as it was if there wasn't a phenomenal fake out user to make azu viable on its own). That does not mean banning megas was correct, nor does it mean that banning dynamax is correct.
But even further, you misrepresent my argument. my claim is along the lines of: if in order to save dynamax we had to ban caterpie and weedle, because they turned out to be broken with dynamax, then i'm totally down with that. Similarly, my claim is that Weakness policy has not been a consistently important item in DOU, as it has had a grand total of 1 consistent user for the past 3 years, and wasn't used in gen 6. Banning Sitrus Berry to save Dynamax would give me a lot more pause, as Sitrus berry is an important part of doubles. WP isn't, and neither is Beat Up.
My point is not that Z moves are the same as Dynamax. My point is merely that the type of decisions forced by Dynamax, even though they are arguably unhealthy, are not fundamentally different. This was an argument brought up in the OU discussion of banning dynamax, namely, that for them Z moves were somewhat swingy and difficult to play around because of hidden information. However, in OU at least, the key point made was that Dynamax was far more swingy and made long term decisionmaking insufficiently relevant. I do not believe that this is the case for Dynamax as it stands in DOU. There are many situations where my opponent and I trade dynamax turn 1 and then we have to play a real game of DOU after that. Or I can preserve my resource to dynamax, but might not get a chance to use it efficiently later as all my mons might be chipped. In DOU, Dynamax isn't anywhere near as swingy as it was in OU and, potentially contrary to popular belief, I don't believe that using your dynamax best ends the game. Consider this game vs memoric. We effectively traded Dynamax and Togekiss by the end of turn 2, and as a result we had a 4v4 game of pokemon to play, in which I had to predict hitmontop's sucker punches and so forth. It was just a game of pokemon.
Zacian has insufficient counterplay. There is, however, quite reasonable counterplay to Dynamax. Just because a pokemon is maxed doesn't mean it kills resists.
In my ideal world, I would ban every pokemon besides Thalks and just play Thalks mirrors every game. It would be enjoyable for me, I find the gameplay interactive and interesting, and I would have a great time. However, that's not pokemon. I didn't advocate banning the things I didn't like just because I didn't like them, because they weren't broken. Dynamax isn't broken. You not liking it doesn't change that.
finally, I generally agree with Qwello and Stratos' posts--I think they are well said and correct.
This is a false equivalence, and completely misses the point I made. My claim was that, as opposed to Zacian-C, Moody, and Double Team, each of which is a move/ability/mon that requires opportunity cost in the teambuilder to use, Dynamax does not have an opportunity cost to use as it is always available to each player. I am not saying that that is a reason that Dynamax should not be banned, but instead arguing that the context of discussing its ban is different than that of discussing the ban of an individual pokemon. One of the reasons that we ban Zacian-C is because of its likely centralizing effect--there would basically be no reason to use a team without Zacian-C and it would make teams all look identical. With Dynamax, there is no builder restriction, so even if Dynamax is legal, it doesn't necessarily force the same type of teambuilder restrictions. Further, moody is unbanned actually, so it's not a great example for you. Your last example, Double Team, isn't banned because of teambuilder restrictions, it's banned because we believe that evasion moves add too much of a luck element to the game, and are non-competitive. Dynamax isn't about luck. It's about resource management. My point is merely that we should evaluate Dynamax for what it is, not as if it was something else.I'd say that resorting to the argument that Dynamax is "automatically accessible to both players" is actually more of an indictment of how unhealthy it is in this current game. You're literally suggesting countering a strategy by using that same exact strategy yourself. Should Zacian-C, Moody, or Double Team be legal for that reason as well? Because this exact same argument could be rehashed in order to suggest that they should be.
You say that Dynamax is unhealthy because it is accessible to both players in response to me, but that is missing the point. I am saying in this quote merely that Dynamax doesn't place the same type of teambuilding restrictions that individual mons might.
You seem to have missed the point I was making here. Smogon policy dictates avoiding complex bans when possible, in part to reduce the number of clauses and to make the ban list more explainable to newcomers. However, we should not get bogged down by that idea and assume that, just because a banlist has fewer clauses, that it is ideal. If we ban 2 pokemon to save Dynamax, we have banned 2 more things, but the thing we save is a big deal.Not really. It's banning one mechanic that causes many moves and items to be unhealthy instead of trying to find every single thing that Dynamax takes over the top and banning all of them one at a time.
So you're right on this in principle, but wrong in actuality. I agree, we should not move heaven and earth to keep dynamax. if it turns out that Ultra Beasts are broken with Dynamax and also many other pokemon that drop in DLC, I am more than happy to ban dynamax at that point rather than ban 20-30 pokemon. That is, most emphatically, not what is the case at this point. What is on the chopping block is: a single item, a single move, and potentially a single pokemon in addition (if we decide Zard is broken). That is neither heaven, nor earth. it is 3 things.I disagree. When virtually every single item or move brought to the chopping block revolves around something Dynamaxing, banning the latter isn't so much throwing the baby out with the bathwater as it is cutting out a tumor so the problems it causes will eventually go away. That's not to say that banning Dynamax would be some miracle pill that would magically solve every problem, but if it is the reason why so many things are problematic, it does no good to let it continue to fester and potentially make even more items or moves banworthy. Is it really worth moving heaven and earth in order to keep Dynamax intact when banning the mechanic would keep them from being problematic in the first place?
Unsurprisingly, when new mechanics are introduced, many of the bans relate to the ability to interact with the new mechanic. Many bans in gen 6 were megas or about the ability of pokemon to interact with megas in a given context (rachi azu probably wouldn't have been as strong as it was if there wasn't a phenomenal fake out user to make azu viable on its own). That does not mean banning megas was correct, nor does it mean that banning dynamax is correct.
But even further, you misrepresent my argument. my claim is along the lines of: if in order to save dynamax we had to ban caterpie and weedle, because they turned out to be broken with dynamax, then i'm totally down with that. Similarly, my claim is that Weakness policy has not been a consistently important item in DOU, as it has had a grand total of 1 consistent user for the past 3 years, and wasn't used in gen 6. Banning Sitrus Berry to save Dynamax would give me a lot more pause, as Sitrus berry is an important part of doubles. WP isn't, and neither is Beat Up.
First, banning a mechanic is completely unprecedented, except for in singles formats where Dynamax was banned. In those singles formats, Dynamax was banned because it made the game play itself entirely uncompetitive. Although this analogy is not perfect, banning Dynamax is like banning all items--having an item is an option that every pokemon has and is central to gameplay. I am not saying banning dynamax would be as bad of a decision as banning all items, but I am saying that it should be understood to a very high degree of seriousness. Mechanics are not the same as individual pokemon, individual moves, or individual items. They are of a higher order of importance. WP and Beat Up aren't anywhere near as important.I don't see preserving a "massive mechanic" as a convincing reason to believe Dynamax should be kept around instead of the other things you listed. You yourself just correctly admitted that Beat Up and Weakness Policy were hardly ever used last gen. Why did they, as well as the other things you listed, become problematic in the first place? Because of Dynamaxing (and I suppose, in the case of Beat Up, Dragapult being able to spam Ally Switch and status moves may have also contributed). Again, what good is it to save a "massive mechanic" if that "massive mechanic" is what is causing WP and Beat Up to be broken in the first place?
You seem to be missing the argument. Once the dynamax has revealed itself, it is relatively easy to manage. The problem with Dynamax, in my mind, comes from the pressure of it not having been used yet, and the mindgames related to that. My point here was that these mindgames about a resource not having been used are familiar, and we have played with them before.I'm not buying this comparison. You could only use one Z-Move per game, you had to give up an item slot in order for a Pokemon to use it, you could only use a Z-Move of the corresponding type to the Z-Crystal it held, and if the Pokemon holding a Z-Crystal got KOed before it could use its Z-Move, the only way to get the chance to use another would be if you had another Pokemon on your team holding one. With Dynamax, there are no such strings attached. Yes, there are ways to play around opposing Dynamaxes. Yes, it requires a degree of skill to use Dynamax effectively yourself. And once again, someone could potentially use those same arguments to imply that Zacian-C is healthy for this metagame too.
My point is not that Z moves are the same as Dynamax. My point is merely that the type of decisions forced by Dynamax, even though they are arguably unhealthy, are not fundamentally different. This was an argument brought up in the OU discussion of banning dynamax, namely, that for them Z moves were somewhat swingy and difficult to play around because of hidden information. However, in OU at least, the key point made was that Dynamax was far more swingy and made long term decisionmaking insufficiently relevant. I do not believe that this is the case for Dynamax as it stands in DOU. There are many situations where my opponent and I trade dynamax turn 1 and then we have to play a real game of DOU after that. Or I can preserve my resource to dynamax, but might not get a chance to use it efficiently later as all my mons might be chipped. In DOU, Dynamax isn't anywhere near as swingy as it was in OU and, potentially contrary to popular belief, I don't believe that using your dynamax best ends the game. Consider this game vs memoric. We effectively traded Dynamax and Togekiss by the end of turn 2, and as a result we had a 4v4 game of pokemon to play, in which I had to predict hitmontop's sucker punches and so forth. It was just a game of pokemon.
Zacian has insufficient counterplay. There is, however, quite reasonable counterplay to Dynamax. Just because a pokemon is maxed doesn't mean it kills resists.
Being a flagship feature doesn't mean it's good for the game, yes. I personally think that megas and z moves were not great for the game. However, I didn't advocate banning them as mechanics because they weren't broken. That was just the way pokemon was, and now Dynamax is just the way pokemon is. Unless the format is horrendously not-skill based, we should try to respect pokemon the way that it is, as much as possible.We have BSS and VGC for that (and Ubers as well). Being a flagship feature of a generation doesn't mean that it's good for the game.
In my ideal world, I would ban every pokemon besides Thalks and just play Thalks mirrors every game. It would be enjoyable for me, I find the gameplay interactive and interesting, and I would have a great time. However, that's not pokemon. I didn't advocate banning the things I didn't like just because I didn't like them, because they weren't broken. Dynamax isn't broken. You not liking it doesn't change that.
finally, I generally agree with Qwello and Stratos' posts--I think they are well said and correct.