Metagame np: SS DOU Stage 6: Pay Your Way In Pain | Shadow Tag Remains Banned

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everyone already covered this and im rlly no dou expert but shadow tag enabled an incredibly new and terrible dou player like me to get reqs.

obviously on its own that statement doesn't mean much, but essentially this reduced things down to the point where i didn't need to predict at all... 9 times out of 10 i'd just lead goth + wallbreaker and ko something important like incineroar or rillaboom so that my dragapult or urshifu would go crazy later. hypnosis is also ridiculous especially in a format without sleep clause.

there was absolutely no need for me to predict most of the time, no reads were required, i just clicked the funny super effective move and did a whole bunch of damage to important pieces which made it possible for me to effectively have a brainless reqs run. very fun to play but hardly competitive.

ban shadow tag, it's super stupid. this meta is really fun and I can't wait to try it out post-ban (if it happens, which looks very likely).
 
Zeefable I have been playing DOU for about 2 months now and have gotten to about 1500 on ladder and only come across a shadow tag pokemon once in a blue moon and don't typically struggle with it and it if I it is usually due to intelligent play not the brokenness of the ability its self plus it gives birth to many different play styles that you could not pull of otherwards this could lead to a more unique and diverse metagame. I will be voting to keep shadow tag un-banned as it rightfully should be!
 
Wi!low said:
I have been playing DOU for about 2 months now and have gotten to about 1500 on ladder and only come across a shadow tag pokemon once in a blue moon
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i would like to point out that in the last 2 months shadow tag has been usable on the ladder for 3 days. so you seeing an absence of shadow tag makes perfect sense.

call it what you want but shadow tag will always be broken in my eyes, and gothitelle is one of the best abusers of it especially with the addition of fake out this gen. while I respect your eagerness to bring forth a new meta, I highly doubt it would be very diverse. I would love to hear from you again after achieving voting reqs as that should give you more insight on the ability.
 
When playing with Stag and Gothitelle rather than having to think too much my mindset is more, "Who should I lead with Goth to click Fake Out/Hypnosis and funny attack button." When battling another person who was also fulfilling req's, out of say 4 individual users, only one of them wasn't using Goth, and of the other 3 they all had similar teams. IMO Goth makes the game much less skill reliant as lacking the ability to switch in addition is fake out pressure makes Gothitelle broken.
 
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Wi!low said:
Zeefable I have been playing DOU for about 2 months now and have gotten to about 1500 on ladder and only come across a shadow tag pokemon once in a blue moon
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Shadow Tag has only been legal on the ladder for a little over 48 hours. The reason you have not seen any Gothitelle before late Friday is because it was not allowed.
Wi!low said:
and don't typically struggle with it and it if I it is usually due to intelligent play not the brokenness of the ability its self
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While I personally disagree with this POV, I encourage you to make a more effortful post explaining your thought process. A single sentence on why you think Shadow Tag is or is not broken is not helpful to the suspect process and degrades the quality of the thread.
Wi!low said:
plus it gives birth to many different play styles that you could not pull of otherwards this could lead to a more unique and diverse metagame.
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Yoda explained this earlier, but enabling more styles of play and letting less used Pokemon be viable is NOT how Smogon tiering works. The only focus you should have is if Shadow Tag is or is not healthy for the metagame. Gothitelle letting Weezing-Galar have a niche is not an acceptable reason for wanting to unban it.
Wi!low said:
I will be voting to keep shadow tag un-banned as it rightfully should be!
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Shadow Tag has been banned for months, so voting to keep it unbanned does not make any sense.

If you have any more questions on how Smogon's tiering process works, you can message me on Discord at emma#0404. I am all for people sharing their thoughts, but I personally do not really enjoy these low effort posts that don't even make much sense.
 
I vote Ban shadow tag(tbc do not meet reqs just wanna post my opinion)


If I am not mistaken goths ability was banned not cause It was overpowered but because it was uncompetitive? If that's the case then I definitely think it should be permanently banned. Pre dlc 2 I didn't have too much of a problem with and was undeniably really good but shadow tag combined with he stronger mons is not fun and feels uncompetitive and I hope it stays banned. If we are talking purely from a balance perspective I still think it's too 60 percent chance to sleep switch ins off of u turn is also stops constant turning and allows set up mons to have a field day
just u turn also doesnt work cause protect and fake out buys it two turns which is two turns too many.
 
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After reading the entire thread (yes I have no life and it’s 5 am what do you want) it boils down to 8 major points.
1. Haha lead Goth click funny move delete other team.
2: Click Hypnosis and then you can’t run while asleep such fun!
3: Fuck the guy who gave Goth Fake Out like what the fuck dude that wasn’t cool.
4: All posts advocating for shadow tag to be un band must be haha’ed that is law.
5: Goth needs to go back to prison for trapping children and forcing them to dog fight with there pets.
6: For the love of god keep Goth band it makes the tier uncompetitive.
7: Honestly just band Hypnosis super lame move in general.
8: If Goth gets un band I’m leaving dou.

I know it got a little ranty in the end there but abuse Goth while you can and thank you for your time I’m going to sleep know peace.
 
Wi!low said:
Zeefable I have been playing DOU for about 2 months now and have gotten to about 1500 on ladder and only come across a shadow tag pokemon once in a blue moon and don't typically struggle with it and it if I it is usually due to intelligent play not the brokenness of the ability its self plus it gives birth to many different play styles that you could not pull of otherwards this could lead to a more unique and diverse metagame. I will be voting to keep shadow tag un-banned as it rightfully should be!
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PLEASE tell me this is a joke... For one, Shadow Tag doesn't give birth to different playstyles. It only gives birth to degenerate gameplay, especially with Gothitelle getting Fake Out, which means one mon cannot move for a turn. Also, what do you do when you see a Gothitelle? Double team it and thus allow its partner free reign to do as it pleases, which would be a very costly move if the partner in question is something like broke ass bear (I would also note that Gothitelle is NOT your typical fragile Psychic type)? Then we have crap like this:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1345428100
This is a classic example of what Shadow Tag enables. As someone who thinks that Pokemon should be a game where the more skilled player wins, this leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. There's not much room for "intelligent play" when your current mons are locked in and you can't switch to something that could improve your situation.
 
Hi I'm new. I mostly play on the ladder. I got my reqs today (without using shadow tag). Both theoretically and in practice while laddering for reqs, I felt that shadow tag is neither uncompotetitive, broken nor unhealthy enough to be worthy of a ban. For this reason, I will vote to keep shadow tag legal. I will explain below my reasoning, focusing on gothitelle since it's the only relevant shadow tag user.

First, shadow tag is clearly a very good ability. However, gothitelle is a bad mon both in terms of overall stats, stats distribution and type. It has access to good support moves, notably fake out and taunt. Even though some people refer to hypnosis as "spore", it is very inaccurate and often ends up backfiring when it misses since it lets gothitelle take even more damage. Overall, even though it enables quite potent strategies, I do not feel like it is broken. I can agree that shadow tag is broken on a very good mon such as mega gengar, but I feel it is not the case for gothitelle.

It didn't seem to me that it reduced the competitiveness of the game while playing against it. On the contrary, playing against teams that abuse shadow tag requires to prepare careful plans in team preview. If anything I felt it made the game more competitive. Surely the rng due to hypnosis sleep is annoying, but that is part of the game and must be accepted.

I do not think it is unhealthy. Pivoting moves are very good in this meta, there are very viable ghost types which ignore shadow tag and it's quite easy to pressure gothitelle offensively.
 
firstimebattler21 said:
Hi I'm new. I mostly play on the ladder. I got my reqs today (without using shadow tag). Both theoretically and in practice while laddering for reqs, I felt that shadow tag is neither uncompotetitive, broken nor unhealthy enough to be worthy of a ban. For this reason, I will vote to keep shadow tag legal. I will explain below my reasoning, focusing on gothitelle since it's the only relevant shadow tag user.

First, shadow tag is clearly a very good ability. However, gothitelle is a bad mon both in terms of overall stats, stats distribution and type. It has access to good support moves, notably fake out and taunt. Even though some people refer to hypnosis as "spore", it is very inaccurate and often ends up backfiring when it misses since it lets gothitelle take even more damage. Overall, even though it enables quite potent strategies, I do not feel like it is broken. I can agree that shadow tag is broken on a very good mon such as mega gengar, but I feel it is not the case for gothitelle.

It didn't seem to me that it reduced the competitiveness of the game while playing against it. On the contrary, playing against teams that abuse shadow tag requires to prepare careful plans in team preview. If anything I felt it made the game more competitive. Surely the rng due to hypnosis sleep is annoying, but that is part of the game and must be accepted.

I do not think it is unhealthy. Pivoting moves are very good in this meta, there are very viable ghost types which ignore shadow tag and it's quite easy to pressure gothitelle offensively.
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:facepalm:
Gothitelle is not that bad in terms of stats - 70/95/110 bulk is NOT frail; hell, most non-legendary Psychics would kill for that level of bulk. While Hypnosis misses are annoying, the reward for a hit is still insane - and note that as there is no sleep clause in doubles, there's nothing stopping Gothitelle from sending the other mon to dreamland (also, as Rillaboom is extremely common, blocking it with terrain is not going to work consistently, especially when Tapu Fini and Koko get trapped and exploited by common Gothitelle partners). Overwhelming Gothitelle offensively is not as easy as you might think it is because of these things called Fake Out (which puts a mon out of commission for a turn guaranteed) and Protect (which is pretty much ubiquitous in doubles), to say nothing of the aforementioned Hypnosis, and if you're double-teaming it, you give its partner free reign to set up or do whatever it wants. That can spell game over if said partner is something like Zygarde - which is also capable of trapping mons if Gothitelle needs to leave the field for whatever reason. Also, while ghosts can ignore Shadow Tag, unless you're running a team of all ghosts, you're gonna have something that is open to trapping (also, Dragapult is the only particularly good ghost according to the viability rankings). Long story short, I fail to see how Shadow Tag makes the game more competitive when it does the exact opposite - leading to degenerate gameplay.
 
Being back from almost a year long hiatus, i was just trying out some teams on the ladder to get a feel for the current meta. There i happened to stumble into a couple of gothitelle teams and boy oh boy. All of these matches where really awful as my teams are quite susceptible to trapping and it felt like if i made even one wrong move it was just over.

Now im not the best team builder in the world but i have considered three options for what i could potentially do to avoid being trapped. These solutions are to run more pivot moves, ghost types or shed shell. While pivot moves are good regardless if shadow tag is legal or not, I dont think it's reasonable to expect someone to put pivot moves on every team slot so something is always gonna be susceptible to trapping. There are very few good ghost types in the tier, i can only think of dragapult and maybe spectrier. And shed shell is just lol. Your item slot to counter one mon in the tier. Once. The only reasonable counterplay is pivot moves, but as a gothitelle user it should not be a very difficult task to keep track on what mons commonly run such moves and simply avoid trying to trap them until they are forced to stay in and instead focus on getting your opponent to switch in mons that are susceptible to trapping. From there you should be able to set up however you want since gothitelle can use it's great support and good bulk to stall for a few turns atleast.

Now maybe i didnt read every post carefully enough but i don't think ive seen anyone talk about the sheer pressure that an abillity like shadow tag puts on your opponent. Considering if you are gonna make a trap-susceptible switch in order to not get steamrolled/put in a serious disadvantage can lead to some awful mindgames that are almost always in the favor of the shadow tag user, especially since these teams (atleast the teams i played against) carry several dangerous attackers that only need a turn or two to unleash hell. I think shadow tag by itself is unhealthy and uncompetetive but gothitelle pushes it far beyond that since it has the bulk and movepool to really abuse it for itself in singles and for its team in doubles.

I probably won't bother getting reqs but i hope shadow tag stays banned forever.
 
"Your item slot to counter one mon in the tier. Once."

Shed Shell works indefinitely, as long as the user is holding the item. It does still of course take up your item slot, but safety goggles does the same thing to counter basically just Amoonguss and the odd sleep powder. Your other point about how punishing it is is totally valid, however.
 
Crunchman said:
"Your item slot to counter one mon in the tier. Once."

Shed Shell works indefinitely, as long as the user is holding the item. It does still of course take up your item slot, but safety goggles does the same thing to counter basically just Amoonguss and the odd sleep powder. Your other point about how punishing it is is totally valid, however.
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Apologies for assuming it was consumed. It's not an item you run into often outside of shadow tag suspects and i was sure it was consumed. I was wrong and should have looked it up before i posted to make sure.

Interesting you bring up amoonguss and safety goggles. It defintively is similar in that it is an item you mostly pick in order to more easily deal with amoonguss. There are of course other small benefits to having them but you wouldnt use them soley for those. But safety goggles lets you handle amoonguss and its partner by ignoring spore and its redirection while shed shell only lets you run from gothitelle. You might be able to position yourself better with shed shell but shed shell doesnt offer any direct help with dealing with goth and their partner and they still get more time to set up. The idea to pack something for a very specific threat is not a problem and i regret a little that my post comes off a bit like it was. But when you are packing something for a specific threat, especially something as important as your item, it should actually be effective in dealing with that threat.
 
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I think zygarde is in the same boat with thousand waves being a very common form of trapping. Which begs the question of whether trapping is inherently broken, or only in the hands of goth, or what.
Shed shell essentially, for one pokemon, nullifies the effects of shadow tag, which is what is being suspected anyway. In that scenario, there's no difference between gothitelle as a hypnosis user and something like ninetales or politoed.
That's not to say that shadow tag isn't insanely annoying to play against and maybe too powerful, but I'm not convinced that its power is indicated only by a need to run items to cover it, as kartana runs scope lens mainly for incin/other intimidators, aforementioned safety goggles for amoonguss, etc.
In general, I think, the solution is just whether or not your team matches up against the goth team's abusers (and of course being mindful of not being caught in a bad position). Goth can really prey on passive pokemon and frail pokemon. It's not overly centralizing, since most of the abusers are already quite meta. Punishing an entire playstyle of passive play is probably the most oppressive feature ive noticed from goth, even as the meta trends towards hyperoffense and other offensive minded teams.
 
n1n1 said:
From
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/dou-tiering-surveys.3682958/
  • Over half of respondents in each survey would either support or not be opposed to a Shadow Tag suspect test

It was widely agreed by survey that stag should be suspected next. Jumping on the bandwagon for a suspect that was proposed only a week ago as a better idea doesn't make sense. The survey is a great way to make sure everyone has their opinions shared, not just the loud mouths who get the most reactions. I am happy that they are following what was asked for in the survey and look forward to the suspect. Not sure how I will vote but I like the room tours with stag free bc you get more competitive games than during the ladder suspect, so a better idea of how much effect it could change the game
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No option to suspect dynamax?

This whole gen feels super boring, because the main mechanic is not in use.

Be fun to bring it back out for a suspect, just to play with it again, just to ban it again like you guys are doing with shadow tag. This feels like a excuse to have some fun again, instead of a general, actual and real suspect test for shadow tag.

I mean shadow tag is just as broke as dynamax so fuck it. Let’s have some fun before the .5 half a gen remake drops.
 
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As a player who enjoys trapping people on the ladder with Gothitelle quite a lot, I feel I can confidently say that Gothitelle is broken, but I don't think it's broken because of some sort of fundamental problem with restricting switches. I think that clearly isn't true to anyone who plays doubles. Dugtrio, Wobbuffet, and Thousand Waves are all not anywhere near as powerful as Gothitelle. In addition, I don't think Gothitelle is broken because it makes the better player lose more often. Pivoting Gothitelle into an advantageous position requires understanding of the board several turns in advance - sure, a Fake Out + HO KO on a slot is good, but if that comes at the cost of the opponent pivoting to another threat to set up, you didn't really gain anything from the interaction. Gothitelle rewards the better player by capitalizing on the opponent having a bad team (and so punishing by locking in a bad slot) or on the opponent making bad plays (to lock in a slot after advantageous board positioning). Gothitelle's strengths only shine through when used by a player who understands board positioning, which is why I played exactly 1 Gothitelle on ladder out of my 41 games.

However, I think Gothitelle does some things too well:
  • In tandem with Incineroar, it can instantly lock down a "passive" slot with Fake Out + Parting Shot. This is SUPER easy to do. It basically forces the opponent to never have a mon like P2, AV Kyurem-B, Volcanion, etc. to never be out without something that can pressure that combo. Something like Banded Zygarde at -2 is just not going to do enough with Tarrows before they lose half their team or are forced to kill it themselves. This situation felt really easy to consistently generate while laddering.
  • It pins offensive KOs too easily. Fake Out + Urshifu is an unblockable KO on way too many mons, and while you do have to think to make sure you aren't giving up board positioning later, as long as you think it is nigh-unpunishable on certain teams. Of course, this doesn't have to be Urshifu either. In VGC, Gothitelle is balanced with the potential of Dynamax blocking Fake Out, but you simply don't have that counterplay here, and it's a big deal.
  • It has too many viable support options. There's of course Fake Out. Hypnosis turns what's supposed to be a passive mon into one with offensive pressure. Skill Swap gives stag to even more broken mons. It gets Heal Pulse, Trick Room, Taunt, and Helping Hand, and all of these are extremely flexible. You only really "need" Fake Out and Protect, and you don't even "need" both.
    • I especially want to emphasize Hypnosis. While I don't think it's broken, I do think it's uncompetitive because of the amount of variance it brings. Putting a mon to sleep when you already are in an advantageous board is really, really stupid when it's only a 60% probability to do so. Pivoting to Fini is barely an option because Fini does nothing to Goth damage-wise and all Hypnosis Goth teams are gonna have Rillaboom. Hypnosis changes Gothitelle from a very straightforward mon that does a couple things well to a Pokemon that causes games to be won or lost on different levels of RNG.
For me, it seems clear that the problem is really Gothitelle and not Shadow Tag. It's the combination of its support moves with Shadow Tag that make it broken. It's why Gothitelle only became broken in Gen 8 and is only memed about in past gens. However, I do also think it's simpler to ban Shadow Tag rather than banning Gothitelle + Gothorita (Gothorita would have to go to since its bulk is comparable enough to not really make a difference). The collateral is the Wobbuffet line and Gothita which nobody cares about in a Doubles OU context. So I think that keeping Shadow Tag banned makes the most sense.
 
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Welp, after finally finishing my ladder games, I guess I'll write a bit since I have nothing to do.

I played 44 ladder games to get reqs, and only faced 3 Goths in the process. Yes, exactly, only 3. I can barely describe what it is to go against a Goth because the ladder is shit. I can, however, clearly say that I abused it hard and that I punished HARD with it. Goth can make you punish as few things can do when your opponent positions itself in a bad way, make a wrong switch into Goth, or get Eject button'd when trying to Uturn out. (s/o's Button Rilla haha).

And out of those 44 games, the 3 games with Goth + a couple more here and there, I faced players that actually knew how to play and didn't allow me to position myself in a hard punish-position, not making Goth useless but really lowering it's value in the game while reminding me that I have to turn on my brain to play against it since the first encounter with Goth I was still in autopilot and got demolished by it. Do you see where I'm going with this?

I'm not saying Free Goth, even if my ladder name says so. I'm saying we need games of people that play at a decent level to evaluate Goth's value on it. Yes, I hard abused the combo, but only vs Cradily-Pikachu-Charizard teams. People that don't even play dubs were able to experience this fun, again, vs these types of teams, but I'm pretty sure their losses were vs people that had a team as solid as theirs but better played. When I went vs good people It wasn't as easy as before to just kill everything and easy win. Even If in some situations I was actually able to kill something because of Shadow Tag, it would leave me in a bad position for next turns, allowing a setup, getting my Pokémon ko'ed back for that, get trapped as well, etc etc, common drawbacks for HO teams really. If I had known I was going to comment here, I would've saved my replays to show how both my opponent and me were just giving up some easy KOs we could've got with it just because our position wasn't that good and probably could've lost in the next turns due to the good-position-set-up we gave. I do think it might restrict more some passive builds (which honestly you shouldn't run either way because the meta is way too offensive), and It definitely restricts what you do in-game. You can't make mistakes at all, or that can lose you the game, you can't bring choice-locked users anymore (If without momentum move), because, as Wobble said, neutralizing a target with Goth + Incin's Parting Shot is quite easy to do. You definitely can't do a lot of things with Goth around, but if we are to discuss that, I'd love to see a discussion of actual games, not random 1200's games.

Edit: Fuck Hypnosis. Not only on Goth, on everything. Faced a Hypnosis Mew that landed like 6/7 of them in one game, a Milotic that landed like 10/10 in another one WITHOUT Coil. Delete that move or nerf it to 1% accuracy pls
 
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Hugo47850 said:
I vote BAN

I couldve sworn I aleady posted here but I can't seem to find my post back so I guess I made a mistake
(I got my GxE and Games btw)
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Hi, this is not the thread for casting your vote.

This metagame discussion thread is used for players to provide arguments as to why or why not Shadow Tag is legal. I see you already got your voting reqs, which is great! Now you need to wait for the actual voting thread to go live in the Blind Voting subforum. This suspect test ends Sunday, May 30th 8:00 PM GMT-4, and the the voting thread will be up shortly after. You will be tagged when the thread goes up to make sure you don't miss it, so keep an eye out on your alerts either late Sunday night or potentially early Monday morning.

In the meantime, feel free to contribute to the discussion in this thread (for example with reasons as to why you are voting to keep Shadow Tag banned, not just that you are voting to ban it), or drop any Shadow Tag teams you built in the Teambuilding Competition thread.

Hope this clears the process up! If you have any questions feel free to message me on Discord at emma#0404.
 
hello all-
I'm a relatively inexperienced DOU player but I have a lot of experience in VGC. I decided to qualify for the suspect test just for fun, and I was pretty confident that I was going to vote unban, but the few games I played against Gothitelle/Shadow Tag changed my mind.

I read through the thread and I see a lot of people arguing that Shadow Tag is broken because restricting switching is inherently unhealthy, which I disagree with completely; I think it's important to consider using U-Turn, Parting Shot, Ghost types, etc. when teambuilding and it's very possible to make a viable team that can get around Shadow Tag quite easily. The issue for me arises in Gothitelle's moveset. Having new access to Fake Out, and commonly being paired with other Fake Out users such as Rillaboom and Incineroar, the Gothitelle user has free reign to Fake Out for usually 3 turns in a row with no fear of the opponent switching into a better position. I never found this "revolving door" of fake outs to be an issue in previous gens, but being able to keep a Pokemon at bay for 3 turns in a row felt a little ridiculous.

The bigger issue for me is the prevalence of blind Hypnosis. Aside from it's wild inaccuracy/inconsistency, there seems to be little drawback to spamming hypnosis, and even though it frequently misses, Gothitelle always has multiple opportunities to use it thanks to it's ability to create favorable position so easily.

I think there are much better ways to limit Shadow Tag, such as banning the combination of Shadow Tag and Hypnosis (much like Gravity and Hypnosis right now) or just banning Gothitelle (Gothorita feels significantly easier to deal with), but regardless I'll vote BAN.
 
Red Pill PUA said:
No option to suspect dynamax?

This whole gen feels super boring, because the main mechanic is not in use.

Be fun to bring it back out for a suspect, just to play with it again, just to ban it again like you guys are doing with shadow tag. This feels like a excuse to have some fun again, instead of a general, actual and real suspect test for shadow tag.

I mean shadow tag is just as broke as dynamax so fuck it. Let’s have some fun before the .5 half a gen remake drops.
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No way. Dynamax is some of the most broke shit the Pokemon series ever came up with. You think Z-Moves were busted? Try 3 turns of Z-Moves with secondary effects that have no opportunity cost and are usable by anyone. As this is doubles, the effects apply to all Pokemon on a team in the case of buffs and debuffs. And you get doubled HP as well as some immunities to restricting factors, like Encore or Choice lock. It was broke enough in singles, never mind factoring in doubles exclusive stuff like attacking your own Pokemon to activate Weakness Policy, or Justified + Beat Up, both of which Dynamax enabled. Anyway, the doubles metagame is already skewed heavily towards hyper offense as things stand, and Dynamax would only make that worse. All told, the one thing I would agree on is that it's about as broken as Shadow Tag is.
 
Levant Mir Celestia said:
No way. Dynamax is some of the most broke shit the Pokemon series ever came up with. You think Z-Moves were busted? Try 3 turns of Z-Moves with secondary effects that have no opportunity cost and are usable by anyone. As this is doubles, the effects apply to all Pokemon on a team in the case of buffs and debuffs. And you get doubled HP as well as some immunities to restricting factors, like Encore or Choice lock. It was broke enough in singles, never mind factoring in doubles exclusive stuff like attacking your own Pokemon to activate Weakness Policy, or Justified + Beat Up, both of which Dynamax enabled. Anyway, the doubles metagame is already skewed heavily towards hyper offense as things stand, and Dynamax would only make that worse. All told, the one thing I would agree on is that it's about as broken as Shadow Tag is.
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While I mostly agree with you, I still feel as if Max would be an interesting thing to retest. Especially now that we (seemingly) have a complete and unchanging dex. Hell we all knew Stag was just as f*cked (and I will be voting BAN), but here we are...

Play enough VGC and you’ll learn a trick or two. Its certainly not the most unstoppable thing ever.

Maybe some regulatory factors like we had before could buffer things, but that’s for another time
 
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Red Pill PUA said:
No option to suspect dynamax?

This whole gen feels super boring, because the main mechanic is not in use.

Be fun to bring it back out for a suspect, just to play with it again, just to ban it again like you guys are doing with shadow tag. This feels like a excuse to have some fun again, instead of a general, actual and real suspect test for shadow tag.

I mean shadow tag is just as broke as dynamax so fuck it. Let’s have some fun before the .5 half a gen remake drops.
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I feel like you're missing the point of the Shadow Tag suspect. We didn't allow it just because we want to bring some fun for a while, it's to allow the community to give their input on Shadow Tag as while most do agree that Shadow Tag is problematic, they weren't given enough time to experience how broken it is before Shadow Tag was quickbanned during Crown Tundra.

Furthermore, spicing things up is not a good reason to free Dynamax, it may have been the main battle mechanic for Generation 8 but it is banned for a reason after all as Dynamax has proven to be very undesirable in the long run. I would take a boring, but much stable format over having it.
 
Now that the stag results are over with I think the next action that should very clearly be taken is suspecting Urshifu ASAP (like literally right now). I'll remind everyone's of Emilios post here since he does a good job of explaining why Urshifu should be looked at. The meta has clearly devolved since the survey was posted and is just a hyper offensive mess for the most part with no real way to make something defensive and Urshifu seems to be the main culprit. There is definitely enough concern of Urshifu being broken that it should be suspected and one of the big reasons it should be suspected ASAP is pretty simple, DOST. This pure offensive meta is pretty dumb and broken and now is the perfect time to potentially ban the cause before our biggest tournament ever starts. If DLT and how the current seasonal is going has showed anything it's that the meta is not evolving and that any small innovation there is, is still just hyper offensive stuff and a stagnant hyper offensive meta is not healthy, and definitely not the meta you want for DOST.
 
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