Yung Dramps
awesome gaming
Last September, right at the tail-end of Gen 7 OU’s lifespan, the one and only aim made a post in this very forum that gained quite a lot of traction. Entitled State of Sun & Moon OU, it was a response to the absurd amount of frustration that existed at the time towards the meta. Among the cited and most popular grievances was a decidedly passive approach to tiering with way, way, way less suspect tests than there should have been ultimately creating a situation where there were just too many threats to test and not enough time to do so.
Fast-forward to today. Here we are, one month out from a DLC pack that’ll introduce around 100 new mons that’ll surely flip the meta on its head. In the lead-up to this our current meta is possibly even more disliked than the late stages of USUM OU with extreme centralization around threats like Clefable and Dracovish. And yet, because of how little time is left until Isle of Armor with no delay in sight, Covid-induced or otherwise, we can’t suspect these or anything else that may potentially arise as broken. Sound familiar?
Now, I wanna make something crystal clear before I go any further. This is not a personal attack against the members of the OU council. I by default assume someone is a good person unless I am directly shown evidence to the contrary. In this case I have that same attitude with these guys, I’m sure they’re cool people who are fun to interact with. I also understand how TLs all across Smogon are struggling to deal with the shake-ups in policy this new DLC model is causing and very likely will continue to cause.
But with that said, I’m sorry, but there have been some absolutely terrible decisions, even independent of anything involving the DLCs. Like let’s be real: Unbanning Shadow Tag and Arena Trap at the start of the gen was a complete farce that pretty much everybody objected against from Day 1. And while Tag was rebanned pretty quickly, Arena Trap took literal months to get a suspect test up and running when everybody knew and was yelling about how it was broken and stupid. And while it isn’t directly related to the decisions themselves, what about those consistently horrendous On the Radar threads, eh? They usually start out fine, people make their points for and against banning something or deciding between quickban and suspect, but then they’re allowed to stay up and run long past the point where everyone has said their part and before you know it they come down to arguments over the semantics of a decision with absolutely nothing new being brought to the table, and only after this phase has gone on for like a week or even more will the council finally close it down and make a decision (see the Galarian Darmanitan OtR with the infamous argument over whether to just ban Gorilla Tactics to preserve Zen Mode or the Pokemon itself that, like I said earlier, overstayed its welcome and then some).
In addition, while I said earlier that the DLC model has caused newfound difficulties in tiering for sure, it’s not an excuse either. Just look at literally every other tier than OU, both last gen and this gen. Each has their own Alpha and Beta stages with regular council votes that will unflinchingly ban anything that poses or could pose a threat to meta health while also giving ample opportunity for the average joes to voice their opinions, which unlike the aforementioned On the Radars actually have set deadlines for people to speak out. But even after these rapidfire stages the councils across the lower tiers have shown a greater degree of proactiveness, making sure to at least suspect stuff that is obviously broken unlike what was done with Arena Trap in this generation of OU. The same thing applies for tournaments: It can be a bit rough sometimes to have mid-tourney tiering decisions but it’s once again not an excuse, considering how many tournaments across various tiers we have on this site it’s inevitable, otherwise we’d never be able to ban or unban anything.
I am sure that the OU council has their reasons for taking a much slower approach to tiering without the rapidfire intros lower formats get and I’m sure they’ll say those reasons as responses to this thead. But the fact of the matter is, when you look at Gen 7’s final days and the current state of Gen 8, it’s blatantly obvious that this approach does not work. And if the current council isn’t willing to pick up the pace once Isle of Armor drops, then maybe it’s time to pass over the reigns to someone who is willing.
Fast-forward to today. Here we are, one month out from a DLC pack that’ll introduce around 100 new mons that’ll surely flip the meta on its head. In the lead-up to this our current meta is possibly even more disliked than the late stages of USUM OU with extreme centralization around threats like Clefable and Dracovish. And yet, because of how little time is left until Isle of Armor with no delay in sight, Covid-induced or otherwise, we can’t suspect these or anything else that may potentially arise as broken. Sound familiar?
Now, I wanna make something crystal clear before I go any further. This is not a personal attack against the members of the OU council. I by default assume someone is a good person unless I am directly shown evidence to the contrary. In this case I have that same attitude with these guys, I’m sure they’re cool people who are fun to interact with. I also understand how TLs all across Smogon are struggling to deal with the shake-ups in policy this new DLC model is causing and very likely will continue to cause.
But with that said, I’m sorry, but there have been some absolutely terrible decisions, even independent of anything involving the DLCs. Like let’s be real: Unbanning Shadow Tag and Arena Trap at the start of the gen was a complete farce that pretty much everybody objected against from Day 1. And while Tag was rebanned pretty quickly, Arena Trap took literal months to get a suspect test up and running when everybody knew and was yelling about how it was broken and stupid. And while it isn’t directly related to the decisions themselves, what about those consistently horrendous On the Radar threads, eh? They usually start out fine, people make their points for and against banning something or deciding between quickban and suspect, but then they’re allowed to stay up and run long past the point where everyone has said their part and before you know it they come down to arguments over the semantics of a decision with absolutely nothing new being brought to the table, and only after this phase has gone on for like a week or even more will the council finally close it down and make a decision (see the Galarian Darmanitan OtR with the infamous argument over whether to just ban Gorilla Tactics to preserve Zen Mode or the Pokemon itself that, like I said earlier, overstayed its welcome and then some).
In addition, while I said earlier that the DLC model has caused newfound difficulties in tiering for sure, it’s not an excuse either. Just look at literally every other tier than OU, both last gen and this gen. Each has their own Alpha and Beta stages with regular council votes that will unflinchingly ban anything that poses or could pose a threat to meta health while also giving ample opportunity for the average joes to voice their opinions, which unlike the aforementioned On the Radars actually have set deadlines for people to speak out. But even after these rapidfire stages the councils across the lower tiers have shown a greater degree of proactiveness, making sure to at least suspect stuff that is obviously broken unlike what was done with Arena Trap in this generation of OU. The same thing applies for tournaments: It can be a bit rough sometimes to have mid-tourney tiering decisions but it’s once again not an excuse, considering how many tournaments across various tiers we have on this site it’s inevitable, otherwise we’d never be able to ban or unban anything.
I am sure that the OU council has their reasons for taking a much slower approach to tiering without the rapidfire intros lower formats get and I’m sure they’ll say those reasons as responses to this thead. But the fact of the matter is, when you look at Gen 7’s final days and the current state of Gen 8, it’s blatantly obvious that this approach does not work. And if the current council isn’t willing to pick up the pace once Isle of Armor drops, then maybe it’s time to pass over the reigns to someone who is willing.