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OU SPL XV BW Discussion (and now some tiering discussion)

it feels that there are several folks across the board, myself included, that view the metagame presently as undesirable. as soulwind noted, there is an incongruence between offensive and defensive strategies. we are forced into balanced structures to be consistent -- god knows i've tried to make offense work and have mostly failed.

and with balanced structures, the more i reflect on the metagame, the more i have come to admit that excadrill is one of the most problematic elements. we have finally learned how to reliably use it. the free life orb boost with a solid typing, rapid spin, and gargantuan attack allows it to shift its ev's into bulk. skarmory teams abhor facing swords dance. rotom + ferrothorn teams are farmed when playing against substitute. he is one of the the most threatening attackers in tandem with spikes, which hardly makes it a panacea against them. while i used to subscribe to this logic, we NEED another spinner, the more i realize that it's flawed. fakes smashed spl this year excellently, largely in part to excadrill being busted and him piloting well.

i have shifted positions since my last post because i have come to understand the position of other folks: latios does open a massive can of worms and potential unbans. and excadrill is arguably just as threatening, but has a less treacherous future in my opinion.

yes, i recognize this position is flawed and doesn't align with tiering policy perfectly. but old gen tiering needs to be somewhat pragmatic which i am seeking to work with.

i really think that banning excadrill and approaching the metagame after will be the best future for this tier wholeheartedly. i have always been an excadrill truther and one of the biggest proponents of using it. we may lose a spinner, but we are able to breathe more with our defensive lynchpins. landorus no longer needs max speed, hp, and defense at the same time. hippowdon isn't threatened to be ohko'd after spikes using a mixed spread. rain is forced into less thundurus heavy structures just to deal with excadrill. starmie can possibly use more items than air balloon. politoed can be more expansive in its sets and items.

we can breathe. we can breathe. let's breathe. and then move forward from there.
 
wondering why we can't just ban sand force when the ability is clearly problematic in bw. this is the only generation where sand force exists and we have permasand. surely this isn't a complex ban and falls within tiering policy?

either way, suspecting excadrill has my support. while i still feel latios is the most broken, warping pokemon in the metagame, i'm likely underestimating the ripple effects of its ban despite latias's existence and ability to fill some of its roles. i will defer to sw, finch, and those who are strongly against it and trust the notion that they know what's best here.

we should unban sand rush if this thing goes and we can't ban sand force btw. it doesn't make sense to have sand rush banned in that context.
 
Excal said:
wondering why we can't just ban sand force when the ability is clearly problematic in bw. this is the only generation where sand force exists and we have permasand. surely this isn't a complex ban and falls within tiering policy?

either way, suspecting excadrill has my support. while i still feel latios is the most broken, warping pokemon in the metagame, i'm likely underestimating the ripple effects of its ban despite latias's existence and ability to fill some of its roles. i will defer to sw, finch, and those who are strongly against it and trust the notion that they know what's best here.

we should unban sand rush if this thing goes and we can't ban sand force btw. it doesn't make sense to have sand rush banned in that context.
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council has already discussed that we can’t just ban sand force since it’s pretty incoherent for tiering policy just to preserve a pokemon. this won’t be an option unfortunately.
 
Beating a dead horse at this point but Excadrill's existence in BW is already incoherent from a tiering policy point of view. I fail to see how continuing to modify the conditions under which we allow Excadrill as any worse than what we already have. Sand Force should be on the table.

Excadrill was brought down with good reason but in a bad way - we needed a spinner, so we shoehorned in an entire rework of Aldaron's Proposal to ban the combination of Sand Stream + Sand Rush despite only Excadrill being a bannable abuser. We lost Stoutland, an interesting Sand revenge killer, as a result. When Sand Rush Excadrill was still broken on Rain teams to counter opposing weather, we banned Sand Rush rather than Excadrill, knowing that Excadrill's positives are worth preserving. Both of these actions go completely against modern tiering policy, but have never caused serious confusion among the community and have been accepted with open arms. Its an easy rule to understand. Old gens require pragmatic solutions and for many years these decisions have been considered a roaring success.

Outside of Excadrill, Sand Force is an irrelevant ability and we should be able to tier it in the exact same way we have Sand Rush. If anything this is cleaner than the Sand Rush ban, as there is no Stoutland-like collateral. It is an easy rule to understand. There is no more slippery slope.

I understand the need for robust modern tiering frameworks but when they are applied to old generations that followed a different policy, the result is a farce. Excadrill is a Pokemon that we jumped through hoops to bring down in the first place, knowing it was worth the collateral loss of other strategies and not fully by-the-book of how we tier.

tl;dr
  • Excadrill in BW is a pokemon that we have considered an exception to tiering policy for like 7 years - this is how much we hated pre-drill BW. Let us take one more step.
  • I'm confident the playerbase understands Excadrill (~40% usage SPL mon) is too important to lose, especially when this thread already highlights issues with Latios, Reuniclus, Spikes in the tier. Heck, "we need to keep it for Spin" was a legitimate pro-OU Cloyster argument only 3 months ago! The only route ahead that could gain serious traction with Excadrill is to act on Sand Force, taking this off the table all but guarantees no action.
 
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I think bw is fine but it can be better. The way to make it better is to get rid of things and not add stuff back, while some ubers may not be inherently broken (arguable), unbanning them wouldn't really help with the tiers issues.
Thundt is very annoying in the builder and when thunder paras or it has the right set for the mu it's miserable to play against. However, while it has seen usage on weatherless offense, it's strongest in rain and I find rain to be weaker / less consistent than sand so you do have a drawback. Besides it's one of the few if not the only mon that is keeping rain viable. I have gone back and forth on my stance but considering these reasons I wouldn't take action on it.

Given banning sand force isn't on the table, I believe banning drill would open a can of worms similarly to a Latios ban. The effects of a drill ban are underestimated, if you ban drill the issues that caused its unban back in 2015 would be exacerbated, as spikes would be even stronger than what they already are. It would certainly require further action. Do you ban reun after? Do you take a look at spikes? I have my doubts that getting rid of reuniclus would do much, over the years people have found new mons (ex. clef) and structures to abuse them, Latios would be even stronger as it pairs up with spikes like peanut butter and jelly, and Alakazam is still a thing. Whereas a spikes ban would make bw into something totally different in a similar scale to a Latios ban if not even bigger.
That said there is no harm in testing a metagame without drill and then if it's good we can take action, an OU BWPL slot with drill and reuniclus / spikes banned would be a good idea to test the waters. Hosting individual tours that aren't part of circuit with that ruleset and public replays is also a good idea to give a larger sample size. I wouldn't touch drill unless a metagame without it is extensively tested first. That said, if it does end up getting banned, there would be no drawback in unbanning sand rush, but this is a discussion for another day.
This pretty much also applies to Latios, I wouldn't take action on unless a meta without it is tested first. Besides, I share the sentiments other have posted in here on its importance, and particularly elodins in the part where he says he doesn't find it as overbearing and broken as others do.

My preferred option as of now is retesting Cloyster with a proper binary suspect and perhaps taking a look at gems after. Sets such as the mixed one but also stuff like spike cannon orb made it cheesier and counterplay less streamlined, I was already on the fence before having to guess its set every game, now this pushes it over the edge for me. Retesting gems is an iffy topic for most but it's an idea to give offense back the power it would lose with a cloyster ban, and it would give teams more tools to break through fat sands / kill deceptively bulky mons such as thundt. While I believe a cloyster ban would make the meta better I don't find it to be a priority, I'd first check if there is a consensus taking action on Drill / Latios and then if there isn't look at other avenues such as this one.
 
Regarding Sand Force, my gut was to say no on it because it is not going to jive with tiering policy. I tagged OGC leadership to confirm this the other day; it was confirmed to me that Sand Force alone is not actionable at this time.

The main way I would explain it is this: Sand Force itself isn’t broken, but rather potentially broken on Excadrill specifically. So in removing it rather than the Pokemon, you are essentially saying we can resort to these measures as a convenient mechanism to preserve fragments of viable Pokemon.

This would completely abandon the spirit of the banlists, the concept of Ubers, etc. — why do we not ban Sheer Force to permit Lando-I or ban Speed Boost to permit Blaziken in terms of abilities? Why do we not ban Tail Glow to permit Manaphy? We would end up tiering fragments and running into continuity errors everywhere.

And no, the logic that X or Y was done incorrectly during BW or before OGCs even existed, so we should continue to act incorrectly now is not the answer.
 
ban exca, bring back doggo (and venu while we are at it) and if reuniclus is a big problem after that (not like exca solved reuni but w.e) ban it too , spikes would still be viable without exca and reuni.

Exca uban was the mistake that started to destroy the tier back in the days and he being a ou mon is still a mistake in our days
 
Rewer said:
If we ban excadrill please unban gems or fat teams will be literally unbeatable

Im down to revert to 2014 meta with duggy banned tho
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This but unironically.

We should hold a suspect with the following options:

1) do nothing
2) ban exca + unban gems

"But breezy, we have to evaluate individual items as broken and not theorize future metagames!"

However, this one is obvious and the future can be predicted - there is genuinely 0 reason not to run sand fat if exca is banned with no other changes.
 
One thought that seems to be getting only positive reinforcement is to progress with only binary suspects. I think at this point too, unbanning any Pokemon should pretty much be off the table as well, and unbanning gems at this current junction isn't worthwhile as there is such flux in where the meta might go from here. After any action, they might become banworthy again quickly. I'll skip over the Sand Force complex ban being out of the question, so with all that covered I think figuring out which binary suspect would help the tier the most right now is probably best plan of action. Keep in mind what we do first might just be the first part in a sequence of tiering (that's kind of how tiering is supposed to work lol). I also think that as interesting as it would be to see a spikes ban, it would be so foreign that we wouldn't really know how to look at how the meta would progress. Maybe this makes it a worthwhile meta to shoehorn in BWPL, I'm sure more established people might have more concrete thoughts on how that might work. Additionally, Reunicleus has also come up as something people consider banworthy, but perhaps only after a Excadrill ban, so therefore I think it would be unwise to waste any more time talking about it. If we ban things and then we end up in a metagame where Reunicleus is broken, we will ban it then, but speculating in the meantime isn't productive. Again, if after one or multiple suspects of the following Pokemon occur, the slate can be looked at again if it's determined a gem unban or Lugia unban or whatever else would be the right move when that day comes.

With that out of the way, lets examine the options that have been stated here first by other players clearly. I'll put them in order of how I think action follows the most sense, but with the purpose of clearing up the slate because there seems to be a lot of hyperventilating in this thread.

1. Suspect test / QB Cloyster :bw/cloyster:

One thought that has been repeated by a lot of the respected bwers is that Cloyster is uncompetitive and a fishy no skill mon and one that doesn't add anything to the tier. I think this clearly makes it the easiest thing to suspect test first, especially considering it was tested alongside volcarona recently and people are still calling for it. Cloyster has plenty of fishy sets like nat gift or spike cannon that enable to win games on matchup or with a bit of luck with ease. I think one really strong tiering route that BW OU would take after a Cloyster removal would be to have action on Excadrill immediately afterwards, and then perhaps even consider unbanning gems. Again, speculating on future suspects after the one we deem most actionable currently is not very important. That said many people might consider the next Pokemon more actionable than Cloyster at the current stage.

2. Suspect test / QB Excadrill :bw/excadrill:

I think Excadrill has really proven itself to be too much for BW. It was banned, then we tried banning sand rush to give it a chance, but even just on weatherless/rain it was still too strong, so we've progressed to where Sand Force is too oppressing for defensive or balanced structures. As cool and hilarious as it would be to see only MB Excadrill allowed, it's more comedic than anything. This thing will get suspect tested sooner than later and I think it's going to lead to a ban. Now it is one of the only spinners so it'll be a big blow if it goes, but nothing that metagame won't be able to come back from.


3. Suspect test / QB Latios :bw/latios:

The sentiment regarding Latios seems to boil around how banning it is a can of worms where other things might be become overbearing after a ban, or that it would lead to more unbans. I personally don't see it as overbearing, just that being immune to spikes while capitalizing on them makes it very hard to deal with in some matchups. I really don't have a strong opinion here either way, and judging from the posts in this thread, I think having this thing being suspected ahead of cloyster or excadrill wouldn't be productive.

4. Suspect test / QB Thundurus-therian :bw/thundurus-therian:
Personally, I think Thundurus-therian isn't broken. It's very hard to deal with in some matchups, and it sucks that Thunder has a 30% chance to para. It has deceptive bulk and pretty good speed for such a strong breaker and it's really the best offensive tool rain has these days. That said I think it's very likely that the community is currently too split on Thundurus-therian and that if it were the thing we took action on right away, we'd be back where we are now come May or June.

Alternatively, another thought is that if BWPL will be used to test other versions of BW OU, any of these suspects could be issued by a BWPL slot. These "test meta slots in a team tournament" are typically not super positive in my limited experience, but it's an option people have brought up.

I might not have any SPL BW experience, but these are just some thoughts as a spectator of most BW games from this past iteration as well as a gamer myself, once in a while. I hope this help clears up the goofyness people have started spewing in this thread so that people who actually care about BW OU can lead this tier in a good direction moving forward. cheers
 
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Banning Cloyster would be a mistake because it would reduce the diversity in the metagame. BW already has a very over centralizing metagame and removing one of the only non-sand/rain teams would just make the issue worse.

In SPL XV Tyranitar had a 42.88% usage rate and Politoed had a 14.58% usage rate

Latios on the other hand should be tested; it had a 46.88% usage rate and a 53.33% win rate. Latios is just way too difficult to deal with for any non-sand team and it’s a big part of why the metagame is so over centralized.
 
Dawn Dreams said:
Banning Cloyster would be a mistake because it would reduce the diversity in the metagame. BW already has a very over centralizing metagame and removing one of the only non-sand/rain teams would just make the issue worse.

In SPL XV Tyranitar had a 42.88% usage rate and Politoed had a 14.58% usage rate

Latios on the other hand should be tested; it had a 46.88% usage rate and a 53.33% win rate. Latios is just way too difficult to deal with for any non-sand team and it’s a big part of why the metagame is so over centralized.
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I’d argue that having something that’s broken / a matchup fish is worse than having a slightly smaller variety of teams
 
This thread is really interesting.

I would support a Lugia test. It is hilariously weak to status and residual damage and has no useful resistances to take advantage of against offense. With the power creep I genuinely don't think it is too dissimilar to a Zapdos in DPP OU. Perhaps a CM set might threaten some offensive builds.

I would also support a Darkrai test. There is no way this thing is Uber with the sleep ban. I would rather use Zoroark lol. To be fair this guy adds little to the tier beyond more forced usage of a 70% accuracy move with massive upside.

I would support tests for Reshiram and Zekrom. Kyurem-Black has the same stats as Reshiram and better typing. Zekrom is walled by everything.

As an aside, this year's BW in SPL was very enjoyable to spectate. I think there was a lot more innovation than in prior years. A thank you to all participants.

As another aside, I can only spectate and speculate. I haven't played this tier, or any tier, in a few years, but I do get very nostalgic for its early era, particularly smacking Eo around with Octillery.
 
No horse in this race but "rain will be unviable without Thund-T" is not a valid argument, if it's broken it's broken and shouldn't be preserved. Rain doesn't have an inherent right to retain a certain level of viability.

Hopefully this year is the one that finally pushes things over the edge for the drastic changes needed! Glad we seem to be past the "let's wait and see how the next official tournament shapes up" nonsense.

Support Reshiram btw
 
Do we really think BW is so trash we need to axe Exca and go back to 2015 meta? It's only truly oppressive vs do nothing teams with 5+ =<302 Speed Pokemon and keeps the meta faster paced, more aggressive, and less focused on magic guard spam, which I consider all positive traits. I don't think thundyt is nearly broken either considering the 2 best Pokemon in the tier are solid checks but considering how high variance it can be based on its moves and set versatility, a suspect would be totally reasonable. Sand Force should also definitely be on the table, it can be tiered with the same logic as Sand Rush and smogon tiering policy is objectively ass. Any arguments advocating for deod or Lugia should be taken out back imo.
 
Finchinator said:
Regarding Sand Force, my gut was to say no on it because it is not going to jive with tiering policy. I tagged OGC leadership to confirm this the other day; it was confirmed to me that Sand Force alone is not actionable at this time.

The main way I would explain it is this: Sand Force itself isn’t broken, but rather potentially broken on Excadrill specifically. So in removing it rather than the Pokemon, you are essentially saying we can resort to these measures as a convenient mechanism to preserve fragments of viable Pokemon.

This would completely abandon the spirit of the banlists, the concept of Ubers, etc. — why do we not ban Sheer Force to permit Lando-I or ban Speed Boost to permit Blaziken in terms of abilities? Why do we not ban Tail Glow to permit Manaphy? We would end up tiering fragments and running into continuity errors everywhere.
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i know this is a dead end at the moment but i have to say it: i don't find this to be sufficient justification to not act on sand force. this isn't comparable to removing tail glow to preserve manaphy. there are no other offensive pokemon except excadrill that can make use of sand force. as the only generation with permasand and sand force, bw certainly has justification to point to an unhealthy dynamic that exists outside of using convenience to preserve pokemon.

Finchinator said:
And no, the logic that X or Y was done incorrectly during BW or before OGCs even existed, so we should continue to act incorrectly now is not the answer.
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if we feel that we acted incorrectly in the past, we should seek to correct those instances as opposed to grandfathering them in or whatever excuses have been made. either all these tiering decisions fall under current policy or none of them do. it's bizarre to have sand rush banned and not be able to act on sand force. if it's a tiering crisis for sand force to be banned then seek to correct decisions that are currently causing a tiering crisis. otherwise this is just laziness and strawmanning tiering policy as a means of keeping status quo.

admittedly i'm shooting the messenger here as this is not on finch, but we are in desperate need of more flexible and intuitive old generations tiering policy. the longer this goes on the more i feel we're at risk for sabotaging our old generations and subscribing to a tiering policy that is not serving old gens but serving those responsible for enforcing the rules. while i support suspecting excadrill if the community wants it because it's broken in current form, i'm becoming more and more uncertain about any changes made to bw and wonder if we should prioritize the root issue of our tiering policy being horrendous as opposed to haphazardly making groundbreaking changes to bw.

i support suspecting something in bw if the community unanimously wants something to change now and don't mean to halt that initiative, but figured i'd bring this issue up again as it's relevant here imo.
 
Excal said:
i know this is a dead end at the moment but i have to say it: i don't find this to be sufficient justification to not act on sand force. this isn't comparable to removing tail glow to preserve manaphy. there are no other offensive pokemon except excadrill that can make use of sand force. as the only generation with permasand and sand force, bw certainly has justification to point to an unhealthy dynamic that exists outside of using convenience to preserve pokemon.
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You cannot have conditional tiering because there are no other "offensive Pokemon" with something -- this is downright bad logic.

It also quite literally is comparable to Tail Glow and Manaphy -- Volbeat learns Tail Glow, but no other "offensive Pokemon" learn it, so it is the same exact thing. Your own example proved my entire point. We do not want to go down this path.
Excal said:
if we feel that we acted incorrectly in the past, we should seek to correct those instances as opposed to grandfathering them in or whatever excuses have been made. either all these tiering decisions fall under current policy or none of them do. it's bizarre to have sand rush banned and not be able to act on sand force. if it's a tiering crisis for sand force to be banned then seek to correct decisions that are currently causing a tiering crisis. otherwise this is just laziness and strawmanning tiering policy as a means of keeping status quo.
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I mean I agree with this, so if any action happens on this front (not saying it has to -- that is up for greater debate), it should be to ban Excadrill and unban Sand Rush. This woud undo the wrong decision from the past.
 
My English is not very good, please forgive me. :blobsad:
  • In my personal opinion, the environment is adaptive and even a small change can produce a butterfly effect. Let's try to understand it from this perspective. Currently, the combination of latios, keldeo, alakazam, thunderous, tyran, and volcar has created a seemingly stable environment, at least creating a subtle balance in this grading. I believe that no matter which Pokémon prospect is in between, it will disrupt this balance and be detrimental to our environment. So personally, I don't support sus latios and thunderous.
  • For excdrill, let's recall that before the gem was banned, the usage rate of the sword dance excdrill was not high. When the gem was banned, followed by the development of clefable and the emergence of more and more fat sands. Everyone thought it was outrageous that when the word dance excdrill forcefully broke the skarmory through the iron head, but with the adaptation of the environment, it was inevitable that the def set skarmory would carry rockyhelmat to punish excdrill with this configuration. If this view is recognized, then the task entrusted to the council is to try to re suspect gems，or continue to sus cloy.
  • But if we really need ban excdrill or sand force，ok，ban combo please. Like ban excdrill + sandforce，cause we need the spiner
 
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No harm in posting my thoughts again for what little they are worth -
I believe BW is in a fine state. Could it be more competitive? Possibly, but I don't think it it is worth making any changes to an old gen unless clearly necessary because:
  • No one really seems to have a clear idea of what their theoretical ideal BW actually is or looks like, certainly there is no consensus on this. Furthermore there is no consensus on what should even be banned or unbanned to attempt to reach this ideal BW.
  • You can look at the tiering history of BW - even the most recent tiering decisions to see that no one really knows what is best for the tier, eg now there is talk of re-banning excadrill and unbanning gems and going back on previous decisions?
  • Some people just like to moan about the tier or feel they need to make their mark on it / bring it closer to their playing preferences by changing it. One persons ideal BW is probably still hated by someone else no matter how many changes you make.
  • Current "problems" are often simply just metagame trends over time. Will excadrill still be annoying in 6 or 12 months? Will people still be annoyed at getting swept by a cloyster? Will balance still prevail or will new high offense innovations come to the fore? Who knows. History indicates that there will always be consistent centralising forces along with "flavours of the month" which you need to prep for in teambuilding or know how to play against.
You could say these problems are fairly addressed by voting on tiering decisions and the majority wins. I would say this is fine for current gen, however for old gens status quo should prevail, so doing nothing is fine unless there is some clear problem mon or strategy.

A few thoughts on cloyster as it seems to be one prime target for a suspect for some people:
  • I think it is a healthy presence to keep sand teams honest. It saw quite low usage in SPL and none of the 8 replays demonstrated anything worth taking action over in my eyes. It is stealth rock weak, spikes weak, takes sand chip and can only set up on limited physical attackers or some walls. Even if your team does not have an answer for +2 +2 +2 cloyster, it is still possible to prevent it setting up, or limiting its sweep due to these factors.
  • One line I saw from peng in this thread (not trying to single you out I like you) was
    "It exists purely to try and generate autowins off of what should be safe Pokemon clicking safe moves (SR Landot and Gliscor)"
    I think this is a good thing - gliscor and landorus see consistent high usage because they are great mons that sit on a lot of the metagame. Why should they be free to do their thing unpunished? Why does landorus deserve to check all physical attackers barring mamoswine with no risk? Furthermore to use these two examples, if you don't want to run a cloyster answer like jirachi or scarf keldeo on your team or whatever else, and you want to leave these mons in as set up fodder in matches, you can still run earth power landorus and taunt on gliscor to stop cloyster.
  • The mixed set is currently what I would class as one of those current metagame trends that are most effective for a short period of time, and become less effective and less used over time. The fact it kills diffrerent things if you give it a chance to set up is balanced by being slower than scarfers and lacking ice shard, and being weaker into ferrothorn, tentacruel, etc etc. It is all just tradeoffs depending on what you think your opp will bring and is perfectly fine imo.
All that being said, my preference is do nothing.

However, when the best player in the tier, who has dedicated much of their life to it and this game, says there is a problem, I am happy to say I could be wrong. We should do for example, ladder and tours following soulwind's ideal BW. Maybe it is indeed better, and would stand the test of time without some people believing it requires further tiering action ad infinitum as happens now.
 
Monai said:
Do we really think BW is so trash we need to axe Exca and go back to 2015 meta? It's only truly oppressive vs do nothing teams with 5+ =<302 Speed Pokemon and keeps the meta faster paced, more aggressive, and less focused on magic guard spam, which I consider all positive traits. I don't think thundyt is nearly broken either considering the 2 best Pokemon in the tier are solid checks but considering how high variance it can be based on its moves and set versatility, a suspect would be totally reasonable. Sand Force should also definitely be on the table, it can be tiered with the same logic as Sand Rush and smogon tiering policy is objectively ass. Any arguments advocating for deod or Lugia should be taken out back imo.
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i agree with this.

current bw is v nice. i think exca keeping do nothing squads in check is a good trait.
 
I am not a competitve BW player so I expect to get ass blasted, but w/e:

Gimme more complex bans. Mmm, yummy, yummy practicality not based on "But what if later we are impractical!" Well, how about we be practical in the first place? No one in this thread has found essentially any downside for banning Sand Force, and has noted great upsides, it's literally just "Will the policy allow it?" If the policy doesn't let us do practical solutions like this then that's just an L on the policy's part, and I elect to ignore it (
in actuality, try to push for it to get passed regardless, obviously you can't just do shit lol. But there have been exceptions. If our system doesn't allow for clearly rational tiering decisions, then the Tiering Policy should be changed honestly.

Am I saying banning Sand Force = immediately fix the tier? No, I'm not even close to being qualified to say what would fix the tier, but it'd clearly (unless I am missing something crucial) make the tier better with basically no casualties while preserving a Pokemon that seemingly (again, I might be wrong) be crucial to keeping control of Spikes, and checking certain styles.

Yummy yummy complex bans, complex bans are based, give me more if they are good, don't do them if they are bad. But whatever the community decides, for the love of fucking god, please do literally anything.
 
Time for me to get in on this train. So most of you probably don’t know who I am, but I will share my thoughts (for whatever they are worth)
:Excadrill:
So we know Excadrill. We all love him. We all hate him. I think Excadrill has seen a rise in usage, particularly with an sd set. I don’t like the idea of an exca ban or even a sand force ban, but If it does end up happening, then I am willing for change.
:cloyster:
Cloyster has seen a lot more talk about being ban worthy since the last time we suspected it, and mixed cloy is awful to face when you are expecting standard cloy. I am more than willing to let this one go, or even retest volc, although I doubt that will result in anything serious.
:deoxys defense: :Lugia: I don’t personally like the idea of adding in more Ubers in an already crammed tier full of brokers, especially deo d. I do see some merit in a Lugia test though.
:thundurus-therian:
At this point, thundurus is just about the only thing holding rain together, and the idea of banning it means we have a more dominated magic guard tier. I think Thundy has checks and can be played around, and it does wreck a lot of teams. Thank you for reading friends! :)
 
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