sigh well it figures that my understanding was off. high time i backed off from these suspect discussion threads in general, it seems. i can't even tell if anyone is confirming i'm right or wrong anymore. has anybody actually established a position on questions like this? does the council even agree on why garchomp is being tested? or are we all stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out what the basis is for this ladder? it's all well and good to test garchomp but the discussion is inevitably going to keep coming back to WHY this test is being done in the first place, because people are concerned/interested about what other mons could end up falling under similar testing. my posts have already been deleted once for mistakes on this matter; i'd rather someone clear it up than make myself look like an idiot repeatedly. yeah, i'm exasperated, because i seem to be making the same mistakes over and over again, and nobody's correcting me. all i'm getting are counter opinions from other members of the general population, which is all well and good and i have nothing against them, but it's not something official that i can quote when i want to make more posts on the matter.
i will be extremely heavy on the disclaimers so i don't make these mistakes again. i was
under the impression (ie an impression that may or may not be correct, emphasis on the part where i am not correct) that sand veil was unbanned for
reasons besides garchomp. this raises the legitimate question of why garchomp was unbanned as part of this test, one which i actually struggled to answer coherently in my post. it's quite possible to have tested sand veil separately and dealt with garchomp later, in which case there must be some logic to combining them. i am aware that the reason for chomp being unbanned looks very obvious: garchomp was the premier abuser of sand veil and therefore bringing it back without its prized ability might let us explore how "broken" or "uncompetitive" sand veil is (words in quotes are merely ones being tossed around,
not my opinions). however i have yet to see an answer that indicates whether or not my impression is correct. it seems that for some, there is simply a desire to bring garchomp back because it's
a good influence on OU and that
sand veil is a necessary casualty to prevent garchomp from being "broken" or "uncompetitive", something that's another question of ban philosophy altogether. from
aldaron's post above it seems like my position is not entirely wrong, but there seem to be
ambiguities, and i am not comfortable with making any further declarations until the stand is clear. so once and for all, i will ask the million dollar question, the one i (and others) seem to keep getting wrong:
what is the motivation behind the formation of this suspect ladder? what is the motivation for banning sand veil, what is the motivation for unbanning garchomp, and how are these two motives connected? is one a direct consequence of the other, or are they two distinct things that happen to go well together? and can the answers please be something official, something that we can feel comfortable referencing and referring to as discussion continues?
and @ detroitlolcat: your post was well composed, but i was really really trying to use impartial language as to my position on garchomp, and for good reason: none of those opinions are explicitly mine; your response is sincerely appreciated (not sarcasm!) but misdirected. i'm not arguing for/against garchomp or for/against sand veil; at the moment i don't think i even have an opinion on it and i sure as hell don't have a right to one (not sarcasm). nor do i have an opinion on sand veil gliscor, a pokemon whose subsd set i have never even played against. however you can check
in this very thread to see people talking about subsdscor hax. just search this thread for instances of the word "gliscor" and start reading. anyway my point is that what i AM interested in is the philosophy behind the process, which is the main reason i'm even posting in this thread. trying to convince me one way or the other on whether sand veil, chomp, or gliscor are broken/uncompetitive, or what those words mean in the context of this thread, is largely a lost cause, because it's not why i'm here in the first place. yours was a good post regardless