As for the status of Aegislash, right now I'm convinced it's neither broken nor unhealthy for the game, though I'll make my final stance on it after playing some games on the suspect ladder.
ok so I have been seeing a lot of really funny arguments right here in this thread. I never felt like Aegislash was broken in the slightest and frankly, the pro-ban
arguments are sometimes so laughably bad that they only reinforce my opinion that Aegislash shouldn't be banned. Let's break the main reasons why Aegislash is supposedly banworthy down, shall we?
Aegislash forces 50/50s. This is the central argument from the pro-ban side and also a very amusing one. Why, you ask? Because that's pretty much the whole thing the tier's centered around. It's called prediction, folks. Yes, your opponent can either go for KS or attack, the first being a generally safe option, albeit one that doesn't really hurt your opponent because you're not attacking him, nor are you setting up, and the second being the risky play, which can dent a potential switchin by quite a bit but risks just getting KOd if your opponent predicts it. Now what is
apparently the big issue is that the 50/50s Aegislash forces are
unfair and
luck-based. I, however, fail to see how KS vs attack is any different from the average 50/50. Let's say my HP Fighting/Fire Latios is in on your Landorus. My opponent has a Bisharp. Now I could use HP to nail Bisharp on the switch, but if my opponent knows that would be too obvious he could just stay in and use Sludge Wave to finish me off (for the sake of convenience let's assume Latios is weakened and can be KOd by Sludge Wave at this range), so maybe I want to go for Draco Meteor instead. It's not exactly the same situation of course, but the line can be drawn: Draco Meteor is the safer option because you don't immediately get KOd in case your opponent predicts correctly and HP is the riskier play, but it is a better reaction to the most obvious play your opponent can make, just like KS is the safer option where Aegislash doesn't get harmed when it does it, but does open the way for, say, a Landorus to come in and threaten it out, thus shifting the offensive momentum towards the opponent, whereas Shadow Ball is a much riskier play because you risk a certain KO in case your opponent predicts correctly, but is less obvious and therefor might catch the opponent off guard. Face it: The meta right now
is 50/50s, banning one or two Pokemon that are part of this 50/50-heavy meta doesn't solve the problem.
On another note, when Aegislash wins a 50/50, the worst that can happen is that something is severely dented, for there isn't much that is OHKOd by standard crumbler and it has no means of setting up successfully bar WP sets and Stance Dance, which both come with their fair share of problems. I'm way more terrified of losing a 50/50 vs, say, a Mawile, because if it SDs on the switch then there's a fat chance that
at least one of my mons is roflstomped.
Its stats are too good. Yeah uh, you should never base your arguments on raw stats. Unlike what many people state, it
doesn't have an effective BST of 720 because you have to keep on using KS to keep that bulk. Also, if Kyurem-B proved anything, it's that base stats don't say much about how good the Pokemon is. One thing that people also forget is that, when they are talking about Aegislash' offensive presence they only take into account that it has "THE SAME OFFENSES AS DEOXYS", whereas nobody seems to really shine a light on the fact that a) Aegislash' main STAB move has a BP of 80, which is hardly impressive and b) considering Aegislash is generally used as a tank and needs to be able to switch up moves to be effective, meaning that most boosting items (LO and Choice items) are generally not very good choices for it (bar lure sets, which I will come back to later on). These 2 facts mean that Aegislash isn't as strong as people are making it out to be. With bulk that is only in effect after a KS (and a shitty HP st and offensive stats that are compromised by a kinda weak STAB move and the need for some survivability, these base stats suddenly aren't that spectacular anymore, now are they?
It's overcentralizing. This is blatantly false. Yes, you have to prepare for Aegislash, but you have to prepare for every top threat, so Aegislash isn't unique in this regard. What's more is that you don't have to run things
specifically for it in order to not be screwed by it. Anything that does a good job at checking Aegislash has other purposes. Bring me examples of times where you feel like your team is well-built but can't fit a proper answer to Aegislash on it. Furthermore, apparently it's a big deal that some mons run EQ over something else in order to be able to hit Aegislash, but I don't see this as a great example of why Aegislash would be so overcentralizing, because these mons can afford to run EQ anyway: Ttar would otherwise run Superpower over EQ, which generally hits the same targets as EQ but is slightly stronger at the cost of a stat drop, choiced Terrakion only needs its STABs to cover pretty much anything it needs and can do whatever with its last two slots anyway and Mega Pinsir would otherwise run CC, which also generally hits the same targets but is slightly stronger at the cost of a stat drop. This does show some centralization, but none of these examples show me that people run necessarily bad things for Aegislash, but rather slightly inferior things that they would otherwise pass up, but as is the case with any top threat, if you're able to hit it hard without passing any coverage up, why wouldn't you?
It's versatile. None more versatile than others, I'd say. Aegislash has two main sets: Crumbler and SubToxic. Other than these, it has some niche sets like lures (max speed to donk Bisharp, LO Flash Cannon to beat Mandibuzz more reliably, etc) and some sweeping sets like Weakness Policy (which relies on taking a hit that it can hardly take in order to "sweep" which is easier said than done because you need to use Autotomize for your speed and priority is still everywhere, so good luck sweeping when you're so low on HP) and Stance Dance (went out of fashion really fast because it doesn't KO much with Sneak even at +2, meaning that it will be picked off sooner or later). Now the problem with all these other sets is that when you aren't facing the usual check/counter you want to beat with it, it's a subpar set, making them none more effective than lure sets on other mons. Also, mispredicting the Aegislash set isn't the end of the world, because unlike when you think that, let's say, your opponent's Azumarill is CB but it turns out to be BD, your team isn't going to be immediately swept or heavily weakened. One mon might go down to it, but that's because
you mispredicted, so it's only natural that you're going to lose a mon in that case. I think its versatility is slightly overstated.
Other, minor arguments that I have spotted and would like to debunk:
Using Aegislash is luck-based. Whoever said this needs to check himself, there is a fine line between predicting whether your opponent does A or does B and predicting whether or not A will happen to your opponent. When you say something is luck-based, it means that you rely on an external factor that neither player has any say in (hax): This is simply not the case with Aegislash so idk wtf was going on there.
Aegislash makes certain mons less viable. The same goes for Talonflame, the same goes for Chansey, the same goes for a whole lot of mons. More viable mons in the meta is not a better meta by definition and one should never use this as a ground for banning something as long as it doesn't become ridiculous.
that's it for now, no tl;dr for you learn to be patient and sit thru a post you lazy piece of shit
