OU Round 6 Suspect Voting
 

We have finally arrived to the voting stage! The following users have qualified to vote:



To determine Garchomp's fate, we will be using instant-runoff voting, akin to the ADV Baton Pass vote. You will have six options to choose from, and you should list them in order of preference. Be sure to bold your list. The options are:

1. Unban Garchomp
   • All forms of Garchomp, regardless of ability, are legal in OU. Sand Veil will remain unbanned.
2. Ban Garchomp
   • All forms of Garchomp, regardless of ability, are banned from OU. Sand Veil will remain unbanned.
3. Ban Sand Veil
   • The ability Sand Veil is banned from OU. Pokemon with the ability Sand Veil are still legal, but must use their alternate ability. Garchomp will be unbanned.
4. Ban Sand Veil + Sandstream
   • A Pokemon with the ability Sand Veil and a Pokemon with the ability Sandstream may not be used on the same team. Garchomp will be unbanned.
5. Ban Sand Veil and ban Garchomp
   • All forms of Garchomp, regardless of ability, are banned from OU. The ability Sand Veil is also banned from OU. Pokemon with the ability Sand Veil are still legal, but must use their alternate ability.
6. Ban Sand Veil and Snow Cloak under Evasion Clause
   • The abilities Sand Veil and Snow Cloak are banned from OU. Pokemon with the abilities Sand Veil or Snow Cloak are still legal, but must use their alternate ability. Garchomp will be unbanned.

Since we're likely to never revisit the issue of Garchomp again in Gen 5, an option will just need to hit a simple 50%+ majority to be implemented, unless an option reaches a 2/3 + 1 supermajority at any point, in which case that option will be implemented. I'm gonna rip from Phil and show you what your votes should look like:

It's as simple as that! Feel free to add a little explanation if you so desire. You have until Friday, October 12 at 11:59 p.m. EDT to vote. Reminder: admins, super moderators, and Policy Review moderators must delete their votes to keep this a 'blind' vote.

Also if you have voted in four BW Suspect Tests, you are eligible for the Tiering Contributor badge. Please PM me with links to all of your BW votes (even if it exceeds 4), and I will process them all.

Thanks so much for all the work you've put in to improve Smogon's OU tier. We really appreciate your efforts.

Umm, there isn't an option to ban all evasion abilities with Garchomp which would be my first choice. Anyways...


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6 (Ban all evasion abilities under Evasion Clause)

3 (Ban Sand Veil)

4 (Ban Sand Veil + Sandstream)

5 (Ban Sand Veil and ban Garchomp)

2 (Ban Garchomp)

1 (Unban Garchomp)

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ps iconic youre a boss why arent you supermod yet

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free garchomp 2008-2012

Posting for MoP as well as myself.

My Vote

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MoP

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Obviously I'm pro banning Garchomp. In a Metagame we have in BW, especially in BW2, it's incredibly hard to cover or check all the threats that run around. You allways have to fear being swept by a powerfull sweeper, so having another of those sweepers makes teambuilding and playing incredibly hard and imho it's not enjoyable to play in such a metagame.
Sand Veil makes it even harder to get past Garchomp and even the most skilled player may fails to kill it due to some unfortunate misses, so I think it's worth banning Sand Veil as well.

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The reason why I picked this arrangement is pretty easy. I think the only reason why Garchomp should be Uber is Sand Veil because it can decide games and is nothing you can actually count on. Of course there are other factors which are decided by luck but banning evasion abilities in general would be the first step to reach a game where skill is more important than luck so you could talk about real competitive gaming.
Without Sand Veil, Garchomp would be a quite "average" OU pokemon. In fact, unlike other pokemons which are currently in the OU Tier, Garchomp has some nice Counters.
The most used sets used in the suspect ladder were SubSD and choiced Garchomp.
SubSD lacks Firefang to handle Skarmory and Bronzong and choiced Garchomp isn't able to hurt them if you avoid CB-Firefang. Furthermore, 101 Base Speed are not worth as much as they were in D/P/Pt because of many faster Pokemon which can easily revengekill Garchomp.
On the other hand, Terrakion has no real counter in the OU Tier. Playing UU Pokemon like Nidoqueen or Slowbro to counter one Pokemon is the same as playing Quagsire in Uber to counter Kyogre - otherwise these Pokemon are useless.
I know I don't speak about Garchomp anymore, but I tried to show that Garchomp is not as broken as other Pokemon so banning him and leaving them in OU would be nonsense.