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Old Jul 18th, 2011, 4:47:07 PM   #55
SJCrew
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A little late to the party here, but upon seeing Cape's post, I couldn't help but to be moved to respond.

Quote:
To be fair, we did reach a No Suspects period in Gen 4 UU.
This is the apex of everything we're working to achieve. A competitive Pokemon metagame most of us enjoy, where the userbase no longer feels the need to ban. We know it's possible because we've done it before. Even through all of the slops, flops, and messy politics of Gen 4's tiering, the end product was a crowning achievement for both Smogon and competitive Pokemon as a whole, and it's only a pity that we took so long to do it that we scarcely had time to enjoy it.

I would not say I wholeheartedly trust the people to create the metagame I want. But judging from what we have so far, we're moving in the right direction. Seemingly overpowered threats that are handled by the shift of the metagame have not been banned, and we've more or less proven we can change our minds. Case in point: Deoxys-S and Latios. They're not leaving OU anytime soon. If they ever do, it will be because the metagame shifted toward the most popular set[s] that made them broken, much like Latias and the rise of her Choice Specs set.

What I don't understand about the the ban scare is why it's being expressed as such an overarching issue when there's no real precedent for it. Once Salamence left OU, no more serious arguments were being presented about any future suspects. Dragonite never filled his shoes. In fact, if I recall correctly, clause testing was next on the list. There's also the tiering of Deoxys-D that many people expressed interest in but never came to fruition. None of those things had anything to do with banning something we "don't like" or "can't handle".

If we're going to achieve balance, though, we can't be afraid to lift the gavel. Garchomp going to Ubers is not the end of the world. He is replaceable. The same way Latios, Thundurus, and any other potential suspect is. In a game filled to the brim with overlapping roles and Pokemon barely separated by their names, I find it a bit ridiculous to say that banning a few of them to keep the power scale of the standard metagame as homeostatic as possible is going to ruin all of competitive Pokemon. If you disagree with the rise of any potential suspects, at least address them case-by-case rather than pointing fingers at a community that wants a balanced game just as much as you do.
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