Announcement SV 1v1 Initial Quickbans Thread

[clerica]

SV has at long last been released which brings a new meta, a whole list of new Pokemon, and the return of many previously broken and powerful Pokemon along with it. This thread is here for the 1v1 council to announce and log any quickbans during the "introductory period" of the meta after which we will return to the usual suspect test tiering.

Quickban Votes:

• Dragonite and King's Rock (11/18/22)
• Terastallization (11/21/22) (Will be resuspected later)
• Mimikyu (11/25/22)
• Scream Tail (11/30/22)
• Yawn and Spore (12/20/22) + Sleep Powder (12/21/22)

 

[clerica]

​

The 1v1 council has unanimously voted to ban Dragonite and King's Rock. While the council agreed to wait until a decision on Tera before tiering individual aspects themselves, there were 2 exceptions that were agreed upon to be problematic whether or not Tera remains in the tier.

While Dragonite may have lost Superpower and Dual Wingbeat this generation, it was given the greatest gift any Pokemon can ask for in 1v1: Encore. In the Tera meta Dragonite beats pretty much everything. By simply changing it's typing to eliminate its 4x weakness to Ice it can now live essentially any hit regardless of typing thanks to Multiscale. Paired with Dragon Dance, a Weakness Policy, and whatever attacking moves it wants it then proceeds to demolish whatever stands in its way. Encore now gives Dragonite a more reliable answer to stall while also locking opponents who might try to finesse it with weaker speed control moves like Rock Tomb then proceeding to Terastallize and take out the opponent.

The council does not see Dragonite's position changing with a potential ban on Tera. With Tera being gone this frees up Dragonite to explore other movesets like Choice Scarf or resist berries which at this point in time are simply outclassed by set up Tera sets.

King's Rock narrowly avoided being banned last generation with no real abusers. This all changed with the introduction of Maushold and its signature move Population Bomb which hits up to 10 times. With a 10 hit Population Bomb Maushold has a 65% chance to flinch with King's Rock which paired with the miss chance and good speed tier it has shifts King's Rock from a meme item to an uncompetitive mess.

Tagging Kris to implement the Dragonite and King's Rock ban, tysm for the effort you've been putting into this.

 

[clerica]

​

Following much discussion the 1v1 council has voted to ban Terastallization with plans to resuspect it again in the future. While there were originally plans to vote on a potential ban yesterday, there were concerns about banning a generational mechanic just 3 days into a generation with no chance to see any sort of meta develop. On the other end it was widely agreed upon by a majority of the council and community that with Terastallization in its current state the meta was pretty much unplayable so something had to be done in order for the meta to develop.

Why was Terastallization a such problem in 1v1 specifically? Without the ability to switch players are forced to essentially just guess what their opponent's tera types may be on preview, and within the battle itself. The fact that any pokemon can be any typing makes matchups overly ambiguous and nearly impossible to discern. While your Steel type may be prepared for your opponent's Tera Type Flying Roaring Moon, they can surprise you with a Tera Type Fire Roaring Moon instead and without a properly developed meta it is impossible to tell what your opponent may be running. Within games players would see situations where they're forced to decide if they should click Moonblast against the Dragon type, or if they should instead click Mystical Fire predicting the Tera Type Steel. This also presents many issues while building since it can be nearly impossible to cover Pokemon if they can be any typing. With no real consistent strategies to mitigate these blind guesses it was ultimately decided that Terastallization should be banned for the time being to let the meta develop without it. Because many of the core issues with Terastallization mentioned are 1v1 specific (the lack of switching and being limited to your one Pokemon to Terastallize in battle limiting counterplay) this should have no effect on any other tier and should not be used as precedent elsewhere.

That being said as this is a generational mechanic, part of the compromise is that there will be a suspect held to potentially unban Terastallization once the meta has developed enough to support the mechanic. After discussing with the Tiering Admin and receiving his approval, the council plans to eventually hold a suspect with a 60% ban vote required for Terastallization to remain banned. This would at least give people an opportunity to experience Terastallization in a more developed meta to see if a healthy meta can be developed around it.

As for going into the future some things the council plans to keep an eye on are Booster Energy and Mimikyu. It was almost agreed upon to vote on Booster Energy until it was discovered earlier today that how Booster Energy was implemented was incorrect, making the item much stronger than it should be. Sableye is also on our watchlist after last generation as well, but with the number of strong Dark types that exist it currently holds a lower priority than the other potentially problematic aspects. Sorry for how chaotic this all has been and thanks for being patient.

Tagging Kris to implement the Terastallization ban please (grats on the promo too)

 

[The Official Glyx]

The 1v1 council has voted to ban Mimikyu. While a couple members held off from voting sooner as a result of not having enough time to play the metagame during the holidays, the minimum 6/8 ban vote threshold was met in order to justify a council ban.

Mimikyu has been a frustrating Pokemon to deal with in all generations it's been allowed in thanks to Disguise offering it a free hit, which ends up granting it far too much leeway to do nearly anything it wants, both offensively and defensively. With Mimikyu not losing any of the valuable moves it had in SS, it widely ended up using the same variety of sets that got it banned there, between the likes of offensive options with Swords Dance or Choice + Trick, as well as stall strategies using Curse + Phantom Force, which now have the added bonus of Custap Berry allowing Curse stall sets to not even have to worry about outspeeding the opponent as well.

With that said, there's not really much else that is as immediately problematic to quite the same extent as what's been brought up in this thread thus far; while Booster Energy was a notable concern for a while, the banning of Terastallization alongside the recent discovery that its boost to Atk/Def/SpA/SpD is only 1.3x instead of the previous 1.5x ended up changing a lot of people's minds towards focusing moreso on the most notable users of it rather than the item itself. Sableye, on the other hand, finds itself in a metagame that is significantly more dominated by Dark types (which are immune to Prankster) than SS, alongside many other Pokemon picking up their own Encore to counteract Sableye's Encore/Trick + Disable strategies, or otherwise even generally being strong enough to KO it before being forced to use Struggle, and because of all this, the general consensus has been that it's not quite as problematic to deal with as it was in SS.

While we will be keeping an eye on these and any other aspects that may pop up, it is unlikely that any will be brought to a vote to be council banned unless there is a significant meta change that warrants it. With this in mind, if Booster Energy, Sableye, or anything else prove to be contentious down the line and the council isn't in agreement on whether or not to council ban them, we will move towards doing suspect tests for them.

Tagging Kris for implementation

 

[The Official Glyx]

The 1v1 council has voted to ban Scream Tail. While an outright council ban was met with apprehension from some members at first, after further meta development, discussions both in the OTR thread + on Discord, and experience in dealing with Scream Tail firsthand, the vote landed on a 7/7 vote with 1 abstention to remove Scream Tail without a suspect.

While Scream Tail initially started off being mostly taken for granted as a result of the more obvious problems that were around at the start of the gen, once they were gone, it was only a matter of time before people began to more closely examine its place in the metagame. While at first it started out using the standard setup of Protect + Encore + Disable, after Dragonite, Terastallization, and Mimikyu were gone, it then began to experiment with different sets like Trick + Disable or further bolstering its bulk with Bulk Up and/or Calm Mind. Because these differing sets each have their own separate checks and counters, finding "true" answers to Scream Tail became a matter of either being forced to use Gholdengo or just putting Mental Herb on everything. Thanks to the combination of its ability Protosynthesis alongside the Booster Energy item, Scream Tail could give itself a boost to one of its defenses or speed at the start of battle, thus making it near impossible to consistently OHKO or outspeed. Alternatively, Scream Tail can also use Rocky Helmet in order to stack up the passive damage in the same way that Aromatisse did in SS 1v1. With all of these options at its disposal, many felt that Scream Tail left players with extremely limited teambuilding options.

As always, we'll be keeping an eye out on whatever else becomes problematic. While suspects will still be preferred as we advance to a progressively more stabilized metagame, council bans will naturally still be on the table if something rises to the same or similar kind of prominence that Scream Tail did.

Tagging Kris for implementation.

 

[clerica]

ty Waylaid for the song​

Following the vote on sleep inducing moves (Yawn, Spore, and Sleep Powder), the 1v1 council has voted to ban Yawn and Spore. While sleep inducing moves weren't initially going to be voted on, following community input from the OTR discussion it was decided that a they would be voted on alongside Annihlape.

Sleep inducing moves have always been a controversial topic in 1v1. Being able to immobilize your opponent from 1-3 turns is incredibly powerful in a tier where games often only last that long. The random 1-3 turns also brings along with it an inherent aspect of uncompetitiveness. Games are won or lost on whether or not a pokemon wakes up in time or not, and in many scenarios both players have little to no control over the outcome. In gen 8 there was a ban on Hypnosis and Sing despite a lack of powerful abusers due to their low accuracy adding to the uncompetitiveness of the moves. However, in gen 9 we see the return and addition of several powerful sleep abusers that have caused us to take another look at sleep inducing moves. Yawn users such as Sylveon and Skeledirge are extremely powerful and rely on getting 2-3 sleep turns to win many of their matchups which ultimately makes many games a test of luck rather than skill. This generation also brought Spore back into the meta with Breloom and Brute Bonnet. While Spore may have 100% accuracy, the Spore users still rely on 2-3 turns of sleep for many of their matchups and don't have the speed stats to really be considered speed traps. This is what sets it apart from Sleep Powder which may be less accurate but is mostly used on pokemon like Jumpluff and Vivillon who use it to speed trap with Substitute. That being said, Sleep Powder did receive a majority ban vote just not the supermajority vote needed so it will be something to keep an eye on in the future.

Additionally, the council has voted to suspect Annihilape starting this Thursday, December 22nd. Annihilape was the original reason the council was planning on voting in the first place due to it being extremely difficult to completely counter in the builder. While the community still seems somewhat split on whether or not it is truly broken the council felt that Annihilape is powerful enough to be worth taking a look at even if it remains unbanned in the end. The suspect will go up this Thursday and run for 2 weeks just like normal so feel free to prepare in the meantime.

Finally, for those of you curious about how each council member voted the voting can be found here. Given how we're starting our first suspect soon we probably won't be using this thread as much going forward and will hopefully shift towards the normal suspect process from here on out. Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far, and see you Thursday.

Tagging Kris to implement the Yawn and Spore ban please

 

[clerica]

That being said, Sleep Powder did receive a majority ban vote just not the supermajority vote needed so it will be something to keep an eye on in the future.

Bit of an update on this that some of you had probably heard by now but one of the do not ban voters changed their mind which means that that Sleep Powder is now banned from SV 1v1. I'll keep it short since it's the same reasoning as the other sleep inducing moves but regardless of having some consistent matchups Sleep Powder still relies on random chance sleep turns for many matchups (ex: Skeledirge vs Vivillon, Jumpluff vs non Scarf Chi-Yu, and Sylveon vs either Vivillon or Jumpluff).

Additionally for anyone curious here's one of the main points that was brought up from the old tiering policy framework when it was being discussed:

2.) One important thing to note with this is that distribution both matters (in the case of large distributions) and doesn't matter (in the case of low distributions).

a.) If Stealth Rock or Scald weren't so common, they probably would not be as controversial issues as they are.​

b.) However, just because something isn't highly distributed, like Shadow Tag, doesn't mean it isn't unhealthy. Some tried to state that Shadow Tag wouldn't be broken on a 10/10/10/10/10/10 BST mon, but this is the wrong way to look at it.​

c.) Things aren't broken (or unhealthy or uncompetitive) only in vacuums; they can contribute to the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Instead, consider how potentially broken elements would be with average distribution on average BST Pokemon. If Shadow Tag was on, let's say 4-5 OU potential Pokemon as opposed to 1-2 and the average BSTs were something like 80/80/80/80/80/80, would it be broken?The take away from this is to not ignore distribution, but if lowly distributed, to assume how the element would take away from team building or battling skill if it was distributed to average pokemon in an average quantity.(Yes, we will provide average statistics)​