I've heard a lot of things being thrown around- the idea of banning stuff like Stealth Rock, Skymin, and even things like this post:
The idea that banning something just so we can ban something ELSE is absolutely ridiculous. With the idea that a game with less rules is easier to comprehend and more stable than a game with more rules, excessive banning goes against the standard way of playing the game in pretty much every way.
David Sirlin wrote an absolutely amazing book called Playing To Win, in which he includes a chapter about when bans are justified and when they aren't. Said chapter is located here: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/what-should-be-banned.html
I'll include some notable excerpts from the chapter, as well as places where they especially apply to previous parts of the metagame.
This particular quote applies to the previously banned Garchomp and Deoxys-E. Garchomp was banned on the grounds that it is an exceptionally good sweeper, and that it was so good that its very inclusion meant that it was far more profitable to use Garchomp than any other sweeper, and that its existence precludes the existence of other sweepers. Deoxys-E was the same, except that its dominance was instead in the lead category. Dual Screen Deoxys-E was so dominant as a lead that there was simply no reason to use any lead other than Deoxys-E to set up for a team, which was quickly reflected in the statistics as lead usage skyrocketed at the expense of the use of other leads.
This is exemplified in the discussion on Wobbuffet. In order to prove his point, IPL proceeded to create one of the most effective and easiest to use teams ever by exploiting Wobbuffet, and was able to not only reach #1 on the ladder, but also managed to do so on numerous accounts. I tried out IPL's Wob team, and it was probably the easiest team to use that I'd ever tried, hands down. This is one of the things that bothers me about the Skymin = Uber arguments. If Skymin is really so broken, then prove it by using the "broken" Skymin to achieve massive ladder fame. If you fail, then the likelihood is that Skymin simply isn't as powerful as you previously believed.
This is a big part of a lot of the controversy over the current state of UU. There are a lot of people that support the current UU/BL split, but it's hard to justify it because of how the metagame was formed. The current UU is a "second best" metagame. Take Houndoom, for example. Houndoom is consistently rejected on the grounds that it outclasses Ninetales for the most part with its better typing and attacking stats, but the problem is that you get a metagame filled with half-useless Pokemon that fit in nowhere. There are people saying that Venusaur should be booted back to BL because it outclasses many other Grass-Poison Pokemon, which leads me to think: Why is that bad? More usable Pokemon is ALWAYS better than less usable Pokemon, and with a smaller BL tier and a cemented UU tier, a true NU can appear, giving yet another playable metagame that can allow more Pokemon to compete.
Before voting to ban something or suggesting that something needs to be banned, first try and figure out exactly why it needs to be banned. Think on it before you just blindly decide things like "SR is broken" or "Skymin is definitely 100% Uber."
The idea that banning something just so we can ban something ELSE is absolutely ridiculous. With the idea that a game with less rules is easier to comprehend and more stable than a game with more rules, excessive banning goes against the standard way of playing the game in pretty much every way.
David Sirlin wrote an absolutely amazing book called Playing To Win, in which he includes a chapter about when bans are justified and when they aren't. Said chapter is located here: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/what-should-be-banned.html
I'll include some notable excerpts from the chapter, as well as places where they especially apply to previous parts of the metagame.
Sirlin said:
This particular quote applies to the previously banned Garchomp and Deoxys-E. Garchomp was banned on the grounds that it is an exceptionally good sweeper, and that it was so good that its very inclusion meant that it was far more profitable to use Garchomp than any other sweeper, and that its existence precludes the existence of other sweepers. Deoxys-E was the same, except that its dominance was instead in the lead category. Dual Screen Deoxys-E was so dominant as a lead that there was simply no reason to use any lead other than Deoxys-E to set up for a team, which was quickly reflected in the statistics as lead usage skyrocketed at the expense of the use of other leads.
Sirlin said:
This is exemplified in the discussion on Wobbuffet. In order to prove his point, IPL proceeded to create one of the most effective and easiest to use teams ever by exploiting Wobbuffet, and was able to not only reach #1 on the ladder, but also managed to do so on numerous accounts. I tried out IPL's Wob team, and it was probably the easiest team to use that I'd ever tried, hands down. This is one of the things that bothers me about the Skymin = Uber arguments. If Skymin is really so broken, then prove it by using the "broken" Skymin to achieve massive ladder fame. If you fail, then the likelihood is that Skymin simply isn't as powerful as you previously believed.
Sirlin said:
This is a big part of a lot of the controversy over the current state of UU. There are a lot of people that support the current UU/BL split, but it's hard to justify it because of how the metagame was formed. The current UU is a "second best" metagame. Take Houndoom, for example. Houndoom is consistently rejected on the grounds that it outclasses Ninetales for the most part with its better typing and attacking stats, but the problem is that you get a metagame filled with half-useless Pokemon that fit in nowhere. There are people saying that Venusaur should be booted back to BL because it outclasses many other Grass-Poison Pokemon, which leads me to think: Why is that bad? More usable Pokemon is ALWAYS better than less usable Pokemon, and with a smaller BL tier and a cemented UU tier, a true NU can appear, giving yet another playable metagame that can allow more Pokemon to compete.
Before voting to ban something or suggesting that something needs to be banned, first try and figure out exactly why it needs to be banned. Think on it before you just blindly decide things like "SR is broken" or "Skymin is definitely 100% Uber."
