Y'all are talking like we can only ban something for being clearly broken as opposed to just undesirable.
You're coming from a VGC perspective where you just have to deal with what's out there, suck it up, and worst case get annoyed with GF. That includes undesirable things like Dark Void. Yes Dark Void can be played around in numerous ways and it's also obvious on Smeargle, who has no offensive presence. But the metagame would be more enjoyable without it, as evidenced by the fact everyone looks down on people who use it.
Obviously Mega Salamence is not Dark Void. But you're really just coming at this with a perspective that many people on Smogon don't have. When I outlined my thoughts earlier in this thread, I said I don't think it's outright broken. It would take a lot for a mon to be outright broken in any dubs format. But we're in the business of making a more enjoyable meta, imo. For me, that's a metagame without Mence. It makes games more matchup dependent, as would any very strong mon getting (re)introduced. If we had banned Kanga back in XY my vote on Mence may have been different. There's some critical mass of threats a metagame can happily handle, after which it becomes uncomfortable and restricts teambuilding/creates large matchup issues. One more excellent mega was one too many, imo.
Arcticblast edit: jesus fucking christ stop taking shots at each other. I deleted this last comment in this post because it contributes literally nothing
Seeing as how the burden of proof is somehow on us to prove that mence is
both unbroken and a "more-fun" meta (totally subjective)
Before we get into deep questions like "why do I play mons" and "what even is the meaning of life" or "did I even shower today" we should establish what makes a meta fun. My definition of a fun meta will basically be stratos', a meta in which
people who are good at teambuilding and are good at in-game predictions excel. Basically, good people do well. What this means is that there are loads of top-tier mons that good teambuilders can use to fill various niches in their teams, allowed for more creativity and better teambuilding.
And, in the status quo, before mence, we definitely have that. My own teams' preparations for dugtrio cup have proven that: we've made teams and then realized that entire top-tier teams and mons are stil completely untaken. We've teambuilt 3 different teams with no intersections, then said "wait, where's kyube, aegislash, keldeo, skymin, diancie, bisharp, etc.". And when group-building or just building by myself, it's apparent that there are loads of top-tier threats. So much so that we've stopped thinking about it as "keldeo weak" and started to say things like "fire weaks" and "water weaks".
At the moment, successful teambuilding requires one to consider and prepare for a plethora of threats.
So, when we ask whether or not we want to ban mence, we have to consider five things:
1) What does it do to the viability of various mons?
2) Does it force certain play-styles out of viability?
3) Is it overly popular by itself?
4) Is playing against it "un-fun"?
5) How does it affect the teambuilding process?
What does it do to the viability of various mons?
Simply put, everything that was popular before is still popular now, in addition with new threats out there. Amoonguss is, and always will be, everywhere. (It's interesting to note that all the arguments of overcentralization apply to amoonguss as well. It's commonly said that you need 2-3 mence-checks, it's also commonly said that you need 2-3 spore immunities). A cursory comparison of the usage stats for before and during the suspect yields almost identical stats.
In addition, we've seen other, previously unpopular mons achieve a new spotlight.
Jirachi, Excadrill, and Tyranitar have all seen new usage, something which I think is great. People are using mence to make previously un-optimal mons to compliment each other and bring them into viability.
Does it force certain play-styles out of viability?
We've seen trick room grow in popularity, but we haven't seen any particular archetype fall. We've even seen sand become a thing.
Is it overly popular by itself?
As many have said, mence is pretty unpopular. It gets better as you go higher, as people are using mence more in 1400+, but
mence isn't overarching, everywhere, or part of most of teams.
Is playing against it "un-fun"?
This question is harder to answer, as it depends from person to person. For me, a fun game is one where I have to think during the match, I have to consider win conditions and how to play, and my opponent's strat. This is doubly true of mence. I don't know who said it, and I'm too lazy to scroll through 8 pages of essays, but someone said "but when you play against mence you have to play differently" and my response is
no shit. That's what makes the game fun/skillful: playing according to your opponent's win conditions and your own.
How does if affect the teambuilding process?
Everyone and their mother has been saying "you have to run 17 mence checks". You kinda don't. The extent of my mence checks were a fairy and a bulky steel, no ice coverage, and I had no issues against it, just by playing smartly. Sure, there were games where I lost to hax/predictions, but
I never felt like it was just over from team preview, which is what people are making it sound like. I wasn't even running electric or rock types, or any ice coverage at all, every time I saw it I just clicked speed control and then it couldn't do much.
The general vibe is that #banmence people are making loads of assumptions, as others have pointed out. Assumptions such as "it's a 2v1", "Jirachi will always be there and have infinite bulk" or "we're actually playing singles". None of these are true. I wasn't here for the last suspect, but I imagine many people are forgetting that
the meta game is different and more accommodating to the inclusion of mence now. I'm going to end this post with a request, to Stratos, to people asking that we ban it again: look at mence with fresh eyes and make legitimate consideration and consider these 5 questions.
Thanks for reading all of this, assuming you did. I tried to make it less of a wall of text.