1. Too many influential people afraid of being "wrong".
I cannot believe that a person in your position thinks that metagame enjoyment (health) is inversely proportional to ladder battles. I had to read that back again to make sure what I was reading was right. The vibes in here and on discord channels more than reflect that.
So before I get to my main point, I disagree with Metagame "enjoyment" equating to the health of the metagame as well. These are two separate metrics that are ideally balanced but not inherently one and the same. The "Health" of a Metagame, to define my criteria on this point, refers to the degree to which skilled play decides the outcome rather than variance outside player agency. Moving to the main point of response.
What is uncompetitive about Swords Dance or another move you would propose tiering action on? You know this is going to be a much harder sell and far more controversial than the already contentious Tera Blast, so the onus is on you to provide reasoning instead of "how does anyone think this is okay?" for a move that, yes, most of the player base DOES think is acceptable.
are we deadass
First: enjoyment and health are very different
I have no comment on your character. I just made it clear that your understanding and commentary does not align with common sense and fact.
I do not think Swords Dance has any case for tiering action. If you’re having issues with specific users, feel free to message me and we can talk about your approach or maybe take a deeper dive though.
I wish Head Smash was either more reliable or had less recoil, but I think it's an option to consider. It compresses hitting the birds + Dragonite which is pretty nice, though it really only fits on offensive sets since you'll still need Ice Spinner or Bulk Up to hit Lando or Gliscor for any significant damage.
I am fairly sure this is a post comparing trying to get Swords Dance banned to trying to get Tera Blast banned, not a legitimate appeal to get Swords Dance banned.
Natdex did it, and they undid a lot of tiering but it ended up being a good thing
considering my post about why a SD ban is a stupid idea wound up being like. word for word the main argument for keeping tera blast makes me legitimately believe this could be the case. (even still the only 2 proper abusers of SD are gliscor and gambit which is a lot less than there are abusers of TB lol)
Natdex also had significantly more support for Tera ban and significantly worse survey results on the balance and enjoyment of the metagame. While the last survey results are quite dated now, we’re still no where near the doom and gloom that was present in Natdex post NDPL which led to the Tera ban.
I've been rather staunchly a believer in the fact that I think Tera wouldn't be an issue if we didn't have such absurd cannons that blow holes in teams with it. Lower tiers Tera feels great, the top tiers use it but it allows lower tiers to stay competitive and variety usually feels better.
To which I stand by the response I made because the comparison is flimsy and surface level beyond being moves used by controversial Pokemon. Poe's Law, satirical response, or otherwise, the statement doesn't illuminate anything about the "Ban Tera Blast" conversation so it's a fruitless addition as is.
I do think there needs to be serious talk about changing the ban requirement to a flat 50%. Even if it's only for gen 9, I believe the last few suspects prove we REALLY need it right now. If not that, honestly just go full dictator mode at this point and have just the council decide on bans, the ridiculous DNB arguments on the kyurem suspect that revolved around a core that hasn't been relevant since dlc1 and absurdly specific counterplay like tera ice (yes as crazy as it sounds, people good enough to get reqs genuinely listed this as counterplay). Speaking of, that's another thing that's been made abundantly clear this gen. A player can be very good and still have no clue on what needs to be done to make a healthier metagame. I'm not trying to say this to be mean or elitist or whatever, but as someone who genuinely wants the metagame to improve.
Volc and terapagos without tera would actually help the tier to be honest, bring more defensive counterplay where its lacking, and without tera they would be fine. Also borderline presences like gliscor become easier to handle and potentially become positive, gliscor sd sets without tera become far easier to deal with. So for where we are there is a valid argument for tera action where the tier is now and if scores end up being low. Because be honest, this is a similar situation to natdex pre tera ban where the path forward is unclear and enjoyment is still low next survey. If that is the case I would not oppose action on tera as a whole as I have stated before.
I'm not saying we should resuspect it. What am I suggesting is that the voting requirements get changed to a flat 50%, thus automatically banning it via the results of the last test. A vote of 74-51 is a pretty strong indication the general public thinks it is banworthy, after all.
Even if we do change the voting requirements to be only 50% to ban something (very unlikely, and I'm pretty sure it was already discussed why this isn't the case plenty before), it should by no means affect the outcome of a voting that has already happened, especially if the main reason it's even being proposed is so that the outcome changes, that would just be unfair to those that did vote for it to stay, whether you agree with them or not, therefore there would be no point in doing this and Kyurem would remain legal either way.
Flat 50% or 50%+1 (as I assume you want) aren’t big enough margins to potentially fundamentally change a tier. Perhaps the ban side should have argued better, or hey! Maybe they could’ve gotten more people with legitimate requirements to not have their vote discounted.
