Moving Forward: The Current Tiering Philosophy is Unsustainable
vanderlylic hit on this point with his (rather humorous) conversation with himself; Godchef brought it up in his convo w/
Acast (he had a similar talk w/ me right before that :P). Others have brought it up since the massive changes the Council implemented. The point is there are too many fringe cases or gray areas where our current philosophy suggests we suspect/ban Pokemon. Mega-Scizor, Mega-Pinsir, Hoopa-U are excellent examples, but every type has major threats that are very difficult to overcome.
Under the current philosophy Pokemon like these would make prime candidates for suspects b/c they decimate some of the lesser used types. However, when we look at the metagame in general these Pokemon aren't broken. Acast even said this:
From my perspective, we essentially have 3 options:
1. Follow the current logic and dilute the metagame by removing these Pokemon.
2. Keep the current logic, but ignore it by not acknowledging Pokemon like Mega-Scizor or Mega-Pinsir.
3. Change our approach
No one wants to play a diluted metagame.
Ignoring the tiering philosophy is just silly and defeats the purpose of having it.
Thus, I want to change our approach.
Currently, we view each Type as an “entity” where each should be viable in the metagame. I propose we treat each Type as a playstyle within the Monotype metagame. In any metagame some playstyles are successful, some aren't. Our Types are the equivalent of things like Offense, Balance, Stall, Trick Room, Weather, etc. in standard tiers. You can chose to use the ones that don't work as well, but you should lower your expectations.
In general, a healthy metagame has multiple viable playstyles and no single playstyle is overpowered. In the context of Monotype, we easily have that. In fact, I'd argue we have more viable playstyles than almost every other metagame. There is parity among the top ~10 types and most of those have multiple builds that will be generally successful. That is plenty for a metagame to thrive on.
Correspondingly, the best players in standard tiers can leverage multiple playstyles to succeed in the metagame. They may have their favorites or those they excel at, but they can use multiple styles effectively. The Monotype playerbase consists of many people that use a specific type, which is fine. However, I don't think the Council should restrict overall metagame development to bolster playstyles that will (likely) never be successful due to the inherent game mechanics.
With these ideas in mind I suggest our tiering philosophy shift to contain the following elements:
1.
Keep the banlist simple. No additional complex (i.e. Type-Only) bans.
This maintains the precedent from the recent changes and keeps us inline w/ Smogon’s philosophy.
2.
Ban elements of the Metagame that are individually broken. Examples: Altarianite, Slowbronite, Greninja, Metagrossite, Mawilite, Talonflame. I don’t want to lay out specific characteristics that define these b/c that will restrict this policy in the future. The goal is to have a flexible tiering philosophy that will work well into the future.
3.
No single Type should be overly powerful. If a Type becomes too powerful we will ban an element that nerfs the type and minimizes collateral damage from other Types.
Examples: Damp Rock (Drizzle+Swift Swim) , Smooth Rock (Sand Stream + Sand Rush), CharX (Flying Core), Genesect (Steel Teams), (Aegislash?) (Immunity Core)
I want to emphasize, these are just opinions and we're looking for your input on the whole matter! These are not changes that have been implemented!