i strongly believe that taking away cacturne's sand veil has a greater influence on NU than veilchomp as a counter to sand would have on OU. therefore i stand by my original opinion: if a sand veil ban is to be implemented, it should be implemented as a sand stream + sand veil combination ban.
now time to elaborate. i think the significance of lower tiers influencing OU policy is being greatly exaggerated in this discussion. it is as relevant a concern as OU policy affecting lower tiers, i agree, but the significance is minimal. we are basically arguing about veil-less cacturne vs antisand veilchomp. whichever one has more influence on the affected meta should be the one that takes priority in our discussion. if we choose to ban all sand veil because of our concern for OU, cacturne loses encore and bullet seed. on the other hand, if we only ban ss+sand veil, then because of our concern for NU, garchomp gains the ability to run sand veil as a threat to opposing sand. which of these factors has a greater negative influence on the meta in question? if our objective is to minimize metagame cross-talking, then whichever one of these has less influence should be preferred.
firstly, veil-less cacturne. i think we already know the effect this has on NU. i will quote stats just to be sure we can break it down fair and square (you can say whatever you like about ladder being shit, but the fact is that the stats are the most objective measure that exists). in august stats, cacturne saw 6.1% usage in NU, ranking 31st. this is a non-trivial usage percentage and indicates that cacturne is solidly NU (ie not PU). 38.7% of cacturne ran bullet seed (with an admitted 44.1% running seed bomb, presumably instead of bullet seed) and 34.2% ran encore. the two most commonly used sets of cacturne ran both bullet seed and encore.
cacturne's on-site NU analysis emphasizes cacturne's unique ability to use bullet seed to break substitutes from mons trying to evade sucker punch, and in both sets encore is given a slash in the fourth slot as a significant utility and support move. i don't play NU, but for whatever reason, 34% of all cacturne players consider encore an important part of their moveset. this is a fact that is already established as of right now and it makes it clear that if cacturne lost these moves, it, and NU, would be noticeably, if not significantly affected. i guess bullet seed is slightly less significant because cacturne could easily switch to running seed bomb (just that it can't break substitutes anymore), and 44% of players have done so already, but it's still an important victim to consider if sand veil is banned altogether.
the flip side of letting cacturne keep its veil moves is that we now allow chomp to use sand veil as a tool against opposing sand. i would like to stress that the following statements are theory and opinion, not established fact, but i rather doubt chomp is going to run veil in this way. we can compare to the most obvious existing example here which is kingdra.
kingdra's abilities are SS, sniper and damp. SS is exceptionally powerful as the drizzle+ss ban itself demonstrates and there is no way kingdra would ever run sniper or damp when ss was an option. in addition to using ss to counter other rain teams, kingdra can run rain dance sets that abuse swift swim to sweep (i have seen people in qc dismiss this set as crap, but whatever, it's on the analysis right now). rain dance kingdra may be a rarity in OU, but QC's opinions are held in high esteem on smogon, and the fact that it has a set means that it is actually viable for kingdra to run a weather changing move to abuse its ability, because it's that damn good. we have seen other examples of this as well, since excadrill was run as a check to other sand teams before it was banned. this is because speed boosting weather abilities are very powerful, EVEN IF the weather is not your own. however let's also remember that rain dance kingdra scores an important boost to water stab that makes it easier to sweep. sand rush doesn't get this benefit, and as i will note, neither does sand veil.
let us now look at garchomp in this light. i believe few players will run sand veil garchomp just to counter opposing sand, and for this reason i think the negative impact of veilchomp is less than that of veil-less cacturne. chomp's other ability is rough skin. rough skin is a bit of a boring ability but it's hardly a bad one. people often speak of iron barbs ferrothorn as a "check to volt-turn" because of the residual damage, especially when coupled with rocky helmet, and the same thing has been said about chomp in this very thread. in addition rough skin has the ever-useful utility of breaking multiscale/sash/sturdy, and most of all, rough skin has utility on any single team, against any team (bar a team that runs all no-contact moves >_>). in comparison to rough skin, sand veil is actually quite niche. it is undoubtedly more powerful, but only when you can bring the sand with you to ensure it's activated, which would be illegal if the combo ban was implemented. if you run sand veil chomp and come up against a non-sand team, you effectively wasted an ability slot that could have been used for rough skin. that damage may mean the difference between sash terrakion getting a swords dance, and sash terrakion being ohko'd by earthquake (this is just an example. if someone starts arguing with me about the legitimacy of this example, i'm just going to ignore it. i am only using this to illustrate a point).
finally, while ss kingdra is good enough that some people actually run rain dance on it, i strongly doubt sand veil is good enough that people will run sandstorm on garchomp because it simply doesn't have enough moveslots to pull it off. that, i think, really illustrates the difference in power between ss and sand veil. you need substitute to abuse sand veil, which means you'd end up with a set of sub/sd/sandstorm/outrage, which i submit is a patently ridiculous set. with all these arguments seen, i have difficulty believing that people will run veilchomp as a counter to sand. it works in theory, but that assumes you come up against sand, and even then rough skin could potentially have equal or greater utility. what are the chances that rough skin could win you a game? admittedly low, but possibly lower than the chance of you running into a sand team, AND then getting a sand veil miss that wins you the game. basically what i am saying is that i believe veilchomp is unlikely to have a notable negative influence on the OU metagame, as long as it can't run the veil alongside its own sand.
finally let us look at the hidden third factor in our arguments: philosophical standing and the desire for a good metagame. we want our bans to uphold a certain philosophy and therefore we need to give due consideration to how well each of our arguments respect that. in this i believe our arguments are equal. my argument's philosophical backing is that tier ban policies should be independent of other tiers, an argument that, in this situation, works both ways. your argument (yee's), on the other hand, is that sand veil, even when used against opposing sand, promotes excessive luck-based play and is therefore undesirable. i think BOTH these things are worthy of proper concern and if examined in a purely philosophical vacuum, without any particular pokemon to discuss, our points would be found to be equal.
in summary, where does this leave us? considering the analysis from my biased perspective: if cacturne lost its sand veil, statistics clearly demonstrate that a non-trivial percentage of NU players would have to adjust accordingly and their usage of cacturne may be negatively impacted. on the other hand, if garchomp was allowed to use sand veil against opposing sand, i think that might be frightening in theory, but in practice is very unlikely seeing as the utility of rough skin is sacrificed if you do so. philosophically, it is wrong for garchomp to be able to abuse sand veil in that way or in any way, since the council has already deemed it uncompetitive. but the likelihood of this happening is, i believe, low enough that we can and should set that aside in favor of something that is equally philosophically significant (the threat of OU ban policy arbitrarily impacting the usage of cacturne) but is also more significant in practice (because cacturne's usage percentage for bullet seed and encore is non-trivial).
my conclusion is that my argument bears more total significance, and that the combo ban is superior because the sum of its negative philosophical and practical impact is less than that of the all-out ban. obviously i'm going to find in favor of myself because i'm trying to defend my position here, but i hope this makes my reasoning more clear and gives people something to think about.
sorry for the long ass post guys, it must suck to have to read all of that, but i think this is the kind of discussion where thoughts should be elaborated on or just kept to ourselves.
