Sand Veil in DPP

[Aberforth]

If you're arguing that the ability should be complex banned on only one pokemon because only one pokemon is good enough to make it relevant, you are arguing for brokenness and going by precedent means that you should just be banning Gliscor.

I only really see two options (aside from do nothing) that make sense that stay consistent with out tiering structure. Ban Gliscor or ban Sand Veil in its entirety, complex bans should generally be avoided and we dont want to open up the can of worms of banning abilities on Pokemon instead of the Pokemon unless it is a blanket ban of the ability in general. Wynut was uber in gen3 because shadow tag was, I can accept Cacnea being ubers under the same premise.

Also not a fan of having it only apply to OU (although I will begrudgingly accept it if the majority does) since that just seems like a clever looking way to get around the fact we are banning an ability on a mon so as to preserve the mon in the metagame.

Baton Pass is a can of worms that I'd throw into the Devil's Pit if I had the chance, but this isn't the place for BP discussion.

E: Jib's idea is good though.

 

[Legacy Raider]

- Sand Veil is uncompetitive.
- Gliscor without Sand Veil is not broken.
- Gliscor with Sand Veil is arguably not broken , but due to its stats, movepool and the sandy OU environment, it has the potential to exacerbate the unhealthy and uncompetitive aspects of Sand Veil.
- Gliscor is not clearly suspect in and of itself.
- Other Sand Veil pokemon do not have the same Sand Veil abuse potential as Gliscor.
- Gliscor has alternative abilities that are not uncompetitive.
- Many other Sand Veil pokemon do not have alternative abilities or have complex move legality issues without Sand Veil.
- These non-Gliscor SV pokemon would be disproportionately affected by a blanket SV ban, even though they are not the prime abusers.

My proposal (same as Jib) - complex ban stating that Sand Veil and Snow Cloak are disallowed on any Pokemon with an alternative available ability.

 

[Bughouse]

Jibaku's proposal was a great first step, but unfortunately doesn't do anything to address the hax issues in NU or LC (where Hippopotas and Gligar are both very viable, and some others are occasionally used) and also leaves things like Cacturne in OU a somewhat open question. I'd modify the proposal so that the same unified thing can be applied to all of DPP and solve both the problems in OU and in NU/LC:

Sand Veil Clause
1) What Jibaku said: If a Pokemon has an alternative ability other than Sand Veil, it must use it. - Fixes the Gliscor issue
2) My addition: If a Pokemon has only Sand Veil, it cannot be used on a team with a Pokemon with Sand Stream. - Fixes the other issues

This effectively means we get the result of a Sand Veil + Sand Stream ban, with the additional bonus that their Gliscor will not be able to benefit from your Tyranitar. It can be applied to lower tiers consistently, without banning any Pokemon unnecessarily. And it even eliminates the not-broken but still stupid things like using Cacturne in OU because no one will bring Cacturne and hope they face TTar - It's too useless otherwise. As mentioned before, the second rule alone wouldn't be sufficient because Gliscor is viable enough that a complex teambuilder ban on the user wouldn't solve the issue, since people will keep bringing Sand Veil Gliscor for the like 50% of games your opponent has sand.

 

[panamaxis]

Gliscor is the only one that is "too much". Sand Veil Gligar and Sandslash are about as uncompetitive as any BrightPowder holder. You will need more than 20% of dodging to make Sandslash better than Donphan/Claydol (which says a lot about Sandslash's viability) or Gligar better than Hyper Cutter Gliscor. They are just totally outclassed. That's why we can take it as "only Gliscor" and not "Sand Veil as a whole".

I disagree. Sand Veil Gliscor is equally as uncompetitive as Sand Veil Sandslash because you're at risk of missing moves against it that shouldn't be missing, and it's the missing of those moves itself that is uncompetitive. You can argue sand veil makes gliscor broken where it doesn't make Sandslash broken, but they are equally uncompetitive. When you say 'too much', it seems like you're getting into the realm of brokenness, which is a totally fine argument to make for Gliscor, but on the premise on uncompetitiveness, rather than brokeness, they are all equally uncompetitive. If Gliscor is broken with Sand Veil, that still doesn't mean Sandslash isn't uncompetitive with Sand Veil.

Complex banning Sand Veil on gliscor alone sounds like a huge can of worms to open... and you kind of would have to argue it actually makes Gliscor broken, not just uncompetitive, because if the ability is uncompetitive then why aren't we banning sand veil everything?

 

[Crestfall]

I disagree. Sand Veil Gliscor is equally as uncompetitive as Sand Veil Sandslash because you're at risk of missing moves against it that shouldn't be missing, and it's the missing of those moves itself that is uncompetitive. You can argue sand veil makes gliscor broken where it doesn't make Sandslash broken, but they are equally uncompetitive. When you say 'too much', it seems like you're getting into the realm of brokenness, which is a totally fine argument to make for Gliscor, but on the premise on uncompetitiveness, rather than brokeness, they are all equally uncompetitive. If Gliscor is broken with Sand Veil, that still doesn't mean Sandslash isn't uncompetitive with Sand Veil.

Complex banning Sand Veil on gliscor alone sounds like a huge can of worms to open... and you kind of would have to argue it actually makes Gliscor broken, not just uncompetitive, because if the ability is uncompetitive then why aren't we banning sand veil everything?

Strongly disagree with the statement that they are equally uncompetitive. Different scenarios, different environments. We haven't yet come to the universal conclusion that the ability itself is uncompetitive within the confines of all of Gen4. Though the public opinion clearly seems to be that it is (in OU!).

For reference this is from the tiering philosophy post, underlined the main point.

c.) Things aren't broken (or unhealthy or uncompetitive) only in vacuums; they can contribute to the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Instead, consider how potentially broken elements would be with average distribution on average BST Pokemon. If Shadow Tag was on, let's say 4-5 OU potential Pokemon as opposed to 1-2 and the average BSTs were something like 80/80/80/80/80/80, would it be broken?The take away from this is to not ignore distribution, but if lowly distributed, to assume how the element would take away from team building or battling skill if it was distributed to average pokemon in an average quantity.(Yes, we will provide average statistics)

 

[panamaxis]

I think you might have misinterpreted my post? I didn't mean for you to think I was talking about non-OU tiers simply because I mentioned Sandslash. I'm purely talking about OU, so it's the same environment, isn't it?

If Shadow Tag was on, let's say 4-5 OU potential Pokemon as opposed to 1-2 and the average BSTs were something like 80/80/80/80/80/80, would it be broken?

Now, let's apply the same logic to uncompetitiveness and sand veil instead of brokenness and shadow tag, since that's what we're talking about in this thread.

If Sand Veil was on, let's say 4-5 OU potential Pokemon as opposed to 1-2 and the average BSTs were something like 80/80/80/80/80/80, would it be uncompetitive?

In the DPP OU meta, where Ttar and hippo are everywhere, isn't the answer to this yes? You are still having the chance to miss moves regardless of how good the pokemon is, so that makes the ability uncompetitive, does it not? Isn't this pretty much analogous to Moody? Didn't we ban Moody as a whole because the ability is uncompetitive? (correct me if i'm wrong) Moody Bidoof is just as uncompetitive as Moody Smeargle, isn't it? (Despite the fact that smeargle is better). Can't you make the exact same argument for Sand Veil?

 

[Vinc2612]

What I meant with my brightpowder comparison is that we don't need to ban sand veil as a whole, just like brightpowder brings uncompetitiveness but has a too high price in opportunity cost to be a problem.
I know that banning Sand Veil solves the problem and this is better than "do nothing". I'm just saying that I like the complex ban more, mainly to keep a couple of niche Pokémon and not messing with the lower tiers.

 

[Jayde]

what he's saying is that if the premise is the uncompetitiveness of sand veil and not the brokenness of gliscor, it's incorrect to keep sand veil around in any capacity

 

[atomicllamas]

I think the only three solutions that make any sense are do nothing, banning Gliscor (if Gliscor is broken), or banning Sand Veil as a whole (if Sand Veil is uncompetitive).

why collateral damage of banning sand veil as a whole isn't an issue in this case

The collateral damage is extremely small to lower tiers if Sand Veil is banned, so I don't understand why its such a sticking point. Sandslash is completely outclassed by Donphan in UU anyways, and a large portion of the time Cacturne is being used in UU to do the same thing that is being deemed uncompetive (obviously not always, but what are you gonna do about it), every other mon is NFE and terrible. While Cacturne and Sandslash are both good in DPP NU, DPP NU isn't an official meta game (a pretty important distinction). DPP NU is also meta game with so many other problems that need to be resolved before its even worth considering, that its really strange its even being brought up in this thread at all.

Besides, sand veil ban had collateral damage against lower tiers in gen 5 which made certain Cacturne move sets illegal (which was relevant in gen 5 NU), so I think its okay to do it here, since they both have about the same level of collateral (about 0).

The complex bans that have been proposed in this thread are either extremely confusing and don't completely address the problem, or are the equivalent of banning Blaziken + Speed Boost which we've avoided because we've always banned Pokemon for their "best" set, I don't see why we'd change that now. Basically do nothing, ban gliscor, or ban sand veil are the only three options with any merit, so one of those three choices should be the result, I'll let more experienced DPP OU players comment on which it should be, cause its not my area of expertise.

 

[Bughouse]

I don't think a confusing ban should be an issue here. We're meddling with an old metagame that gets played overwhelmingly only by people who are experienced. Carving out the best result should be the primary goal when "fixing" an old metagame, especially in the case of uncompetitiveness. And when it comes to uncompetitiveness, being able to apply a consistent rule to all tiers that has the minimal negative impact should also be a high priority. Pretty soon, DPP OU won't be in Tour either, only WCOP and SPL, so its tournament representation will be reduced only to selective tournaments where novices don't get to play and hence have nothing to be confused about.

I also frankly don't think any of the complex rules people have brought up are confusing in the first place, or at least no more confusing than some other existing rules... There are complex bans in other official metagames that depend on 2 separate mons already: drizzleswim in BW, Baton Pass in ORAS, and HypnoGrav in ORAS Dubs.

Doing nothing isn't an option that many people favor, as far as I can tell. Neither is banning Gliscor, since people seem to see Gliscor as a healthy part of the metagame. So, aside from the (imo, necessary) complex bans atomicllamas finds confusing, the only option left is a straight up Sand Veil ban... except this is equally if not more confusing to a novice. If you don't apply it to lower tiers, inb4 questions about why Cacnea is allowed in UU but not OU? You can't even argue that its less uncompetitive in UU than it is OU, since UU has Hippopotas available. Transitivity can be broken for a complex clause like Baton Pass, if, for example, it doesn't need to be restricted the same way in ORAS PU as in ORAS OU. But it shouldn't be broken for something straight up like Sand Veil on its own. And if you do apply a Sand Veil ban across all of DPP, inb4 questions about why Cacnea is Uber? That sounds no fun to me. The complex option is the only path I see that resolves all issues, while creating minimal new ones, namely being slightly confusing.

 

[atomicllamas]

I don't think a confusing ban should be an issue here. We're meddling with an old metagame that gets played overwhelmingly only by people who are experienced. Carving out the best result should be the primary goal when "fixing" an old metagame, especially in the case of uncompetitiveness. And when it comes to uncompetitiveness, being able to apply a consistent rule to all tiers that has the minimal negative impact should also be a high priority. Pretty soon, DPP OU won't be in Tour either, only WCOP and SPL, so its tournament representation will be reduced only to selective tournaments where novices don't get to play and hence have nothing to be confused about.

I also frankly don't think any of the complex rules people have brought up are confusing in the first place, or at least no more confusing than some other existing rules... There are complex bans in other official metagames that depend on 2 separate mons already: drizzleswim in BW, Baton Pass in ORAS, and HypnoGrav in ORAS Dubs.

Doing nothing isn't an option that many people favor, as far as I can tell. Neither is banning Gliscor, since people seem to see Gliscor as a healthy part of the metagame. So, aside from the (imo, necessary) complex bans atomicllamas finds confusing, the only option left is a straight up Sand Veil ban... except this is equally if not more confusing to a novice. If you don't apply it to lower tiers, inb4 questions about why Cacnea is allowed in UU but not OU? You can't even argue that its less uncompetitive in UU than it is OU, since UU has Hippopotas available. Transitivity can be broken for a complex clause like Baton Pass, if, for example, it doesn't need to be restricted the same way in ORAS PU as in ORAS OU. But it shouldn't be broken for something straight up like Sand Veil on its own. And if you do apply a Sand Veil ban across all of DPP, inb4 questions about why Cacnea is Uber? That sounds no fun to me. The complex option is the only path I see that resolves all issues, while creating minimal new ones, namely being slightly confusing.

If sand veil is uncompetitive, then it is uncompetitive on all mons with access to it (ie testing Shadow Tag vs Gothitelle), if Gliscor is the only pokemon that breaks it than Gliscor is broken, that was the point of Panamaxis's post in case you missed it. Transitivity of the ban is a different thing (though I don't think breaking transitivity applies retroactively because Sand Veil Cacturne is still banned in BW2 NU), but again if its uncompetitive in OU, then whether or not its competitive in UU would be another thing to look into, cause you can fish for subs with Cacturne there too, and opposing non-sand weather is also rare in UU.

The reason your proposal is different then drizzle swim / oras bp is that you are proposing Sand Veil is banned on Gliscor / Gligar but not on Sandslash / Cacturne, where drizzle swim was illegal whether the swift swimmer was Kingdra or Beartic and BP clause is in effect whether the baton passer is Smeargle or Masquerain.

So, aside from the (imo, necessary) complex bans atomicllamas finds confusing, the only option left is a straight up Sand Veil ban... except this is equally if not more confusing to a novice.

In what world is "sand veil is banned" more confusing than or any of the other clauses you proposed? Also, I never proposed a system where Cacnea would be legal in UU and not in OU, which I agree is really dumb, but you were the one that just proposed breaking transitivity in a manner where that would occur. I'm confused by how blatantly the third paragraph of your post contradicts itself, if I'm being honest, lol.

inb4 questions about why Cacnea is Uber?

"Because Sand Veil is banned in DPP OU and below." Inb4 you forgot Wynaut is ubers in DPP xD. What an inconsequential thought, why even include this as if its something to be discussed, seriously?

 

[Honko]

I agree with Bughouse. I don't think his proposed bans are particularly confusing, especially given that this isn't an active laddering tier we're talking about but rather a tier that's only played in a few big tournaments by very experienced players. It avoids the undesirable Pokemon + Ability complex ban while also not causing any collateral damage whatsoever. I think this is the best way to go.

That said, atomicllamas makes a fair point about NU not being official in DPP, and therefore the collateral damage to official tiers being pretty minimal. Speaking as one of the handful of people who still care about DPP NU, I just want to point out that if we do choose to ignore NU for this discussion because it's unofficial, and we end up banning Sand Veil entirely, I think it only makes sense for NU to in turn ignore the decision since it's only being targeted at the official tiers. NU's tiering decisions happened separately from Smogon back when DPP was active anyway. NU should continue to allow Sandslash and Cacturne regardless of what happens in this thread, and this discussion can focus on what's best for OU and UU.

 

[M Dragon]

If I had to choose between banning Gliscor and banning SV I would ban SV

On a second thought, banning SV + Gliscor would be a terrible idea because the precedent

 

[kokoloko]

not really...

the precedent would be clearly "in cases where 'innocent' pokemon would be affected/banned by a ban, a complex ban may be made to prevent it" not just "we can make bans of this nature now"

this is a special situation so whatever precent we set would only apply to such situations.

not to mention this is an old gen so its even easier to write it off as "we only did that cause it was an old gen that was only used in tounament play, we don't do this for current gens"

there's plenty of ways around setting a bad precedent.

ps. im still on the ban SV as a whole camp cause fuck cacturne. i've lost one too many games to that thing avoiding hits :]

 

[Aberforth]

How do you determine innocent though? I'm sure people would suggest Blaziken and Greninja were innocent without their respective abilities. And how old a gen is shouldn't effect policy making, we should aim to be consistent throughout.

Also, while the rules are very easy to understand for a DPP veteran, not everyone who will play it will be a veteran. There is a DPP cup coming up in the Smogon Classic, and the smogon tour still has DPP in it and probably will for the next one/two after this. We dont want to encourage "special situations" at all. Jumping through hoops to keep stuff that doesn't deserve to be kept is against what smogon has tried tiering by for years.

Fuck sand veil, but dont do anything complex with it. Either fuck it or if gliscor is the only problem, fuck gliscor instead.

 

[Andy Snype]

The biggest reason as to why Gliscor makes a special case over the other SV mons is its potential to be able to use those Sand Veil turns to do more and actually carry the game / influence it enough with it. The reward of Sand Veil's success is significantly higher than the rest of its There's an argument to be made about Cacturne with setting up Spikes, but in the replays provided, Gliscor more-or-less swept the teams or was able to KO a key mon that would have otherwise ended. The arguments for Gliscor are to be looked at particularly because those are the replays involving this call for Sand Veil. This RNG influence to the degree that has been demonstrated in McM's caricatures of replays is what could be made as an influence to Gliscor. If you want to argue about other mons, provide replays where this physically happens first.

Re: Why SV can be defined as more on uncompetitive on Gliscor than other Sand Veil users, Gliscor has the capabilities of cleaning the game or putting its owner in a key position to win by taking out an important mon that could serve as a check to another mon on Gliscor's team and with that eliminated, Gliscor's teammate has an easier time dealing with the opposing team when it's more likely that the mon could take out both Gliscor and the other Mon but due to the free turn, Gliscor is instead able to provide enough damage to KO the teammate. I can argue that this is more uncompetitive because before I go to X, which normally handles a Sand Veil mon, there now exists a possibility that the SV mon can still win, regardless of what I do, whereas with another mon like SD Sandslash, I could still win because I can have a bulky, middling-speed teammate that Gliscor would normally outspeed but Sandslash couldn't easily handle, i.e. Gyarados or Rotom-A. The point of this is that there is a chance that no matter what I do, I lose just because Gliscor can carry on its own if my moves were to miss. I can argue that the odds of me losing no matter what I do contributes to an environment where decision-making skill does not matter, therefore, more uncompetitive. This is an advantage that can only be produced by Sand Veil because the misses that could be provided by Sand Veil give Gliscor free turns to just whack its enemies.

Sand Veil is an unhealthy component of the game because of the misses that could grant Sand Veil mons free turns, but to what degree could these free turns yield advantages that either take the game out of the players' hands (uncompetitive) or give a large enough advantage that cements a victory for one player (broken)? In addition to considering the possible degrees, what is the likelihood of these events happening? I gave some basic math earlier as to how Gliscor could pivot, but in the discussion to generalize Sand Veil, nobody has provided numbers that lead to likelihoods of something not dying / likelihoods of X dealing significantly more damage than it normally would to call for a general Sand Veil ban for all those candidates.

Unrelated, but after reading the portion of McM's post to ban Sand Veil under Evasion Clause, something interesting to note about standard Evasion Clause is that there are only two aspects covered under Standard Evasion Clause: Double Team and Minimize. The main differences between the moves and SV are that they stack and even only at +1 in DPP, the miss rate on moves is higher than Sand Veil's, so that invalidates the possible direct claim that Sand Veil's likelihood is more likely to happen than using evasion moves, therefore, it should be covered under Evasion Clause (25% for moves, 20% for SV).

 

[ToF]

the answer to this thread is so simple - ban sand veil. the reason is obvious - you guys try and promote a healthier metagame that minimizes the influence of factors that are deemed uncompetitive and less skillful, which would be achieved by banning an ability that can swing the tide of a game in the favor of a player who might not have deserved to be in that position.

a complex ban of sand + sand veil is just plain dumb. if you ban the ability itself, people will still use tyranitar + gliscor because the combination works, but keeping sand veil allowed means a player has the potential to reap the benefits of the ability if the opponent brings a sand-summoner. if anyone tries arguing that "well its your fault for bringing sand knowing that an opponent could be carrying sand veil gliscor", well then i just lol in your face.

 

[Stratos]

How do you determine innocent though? I'm sure people would suggest Blaziken and Greninja were innocent without their respective abilities. And how old a gen is shouldn't effect policy making, we should aim to be consistent throughout.

what? the situations aren't even comparable. Banning Sand Veil to nerf gliscor will send Cacturne to Ubers. That's what Kokoloko means by "innocent." The comparison of banning a broken pokemon that wouldn't be broken without a certain attribute is not just a non sequitur, but the practice of banning Pokemon rather than abilities is actually in direct opposition to what's being proposed here. If we had banned Speed Boost to nerf Blaziken and sent Ninjask to Ubers, then that would be a parallel to what Kokoloko is talking about.

As to ToF, banning sand + sand veil might still be enough because if you can't set your own sand you may be inclined not to bring SubSD gliscor in the hopes your opponent brings sand for you to abuse, but i don't play DPP enough to have an idea if SubSD gliscor would still be a viable strat without sand veil; if so, this probably wouldn't work. Obviously everyone would be in favor of a straight SV ban if every Pokemon had a different ability they could run, but unfortunately that's not the case so it'd probably be best to try to affect as little as possible. SV + Gliscor would also be fine if we're not worried about setting a precedent.

 

[Reymedy]

It's a fascinating paradox that the first time I've ever seen Cacturne being mentionned in OU is right when the discussion is about its potential ban.

 

[Stratos]

im not talking about cacturne in OU

i guess another option would be breaking transitivity, which would work out just fine for everyone

 

[Aberforth]

what? the situations aren't even comparable. Banning Sand Veil to nerf gliscor will send Cacturne to Ubers. That's what Kokoloko means by "innocent." The comparison of banning a broken pokemon that wouldn't be broken without a certain attribute is not just a non sequitur, but the practice of banning Pokemon rather than abilities is actually in direct opposition to what's being proposed here. If we had banned Speed Boost to nerf Blaziken and sent Ninjask to Ubers, then that would be a parallel to what Kokoloko is talking about.

Well, you said it. If we're doing this sort of ban it's either because of uncompetitiveness, in which case the whole thing should be banned (shadow tag, moody, ext) or only the culprit should be banned, with the innocent pokemon left alone, aka ban gliscor as a whole. If you're pretending it's a ban on the ability, but only 1 thing that has the ability can no longer use it, you've just banned an ability on a pokemon to make it more managable.

If sand veil is uncompetitive, it should be banned entirely, even for stuff like Cacnea (Hi Wynutt). If it makes stuff broken, ban the broken stuff.

 

[Freeroamer]

what? the situations aren't even comparable. Banning Sand Veil to nerf gliscor will send Cacturne to Ubers. That's what Kokoloko means by "innocent." The comparison of banning a broken pokemon that wouldn't be broken without a certain attribute is not just a non sequitur, but the practice of banning Pokemon rather than abilities is actually in direct opposition to what's being proposed here. If we had banned Speed Boost to nerf Blaziken and sent Ninjask to Ubers, then that would be a parallel to what Kokoloko is talking about.

As to ToF, banning sand + sand veil might still be enough because if you can't set your own sand you may be inclined not to bring SubSD gliscor in the hopes your opponent brings sand for you to abuse, but i don't play DPP enough to have an idea if SubSD gliscor would still be a viable strat without sand veil; if so, this probably wouldn't work. Obviously everyone would be in favor of a straight SV ban if every Pokemon had a different ability they could run, but unfortunately that's not the case so it'd probably be best to try to affect as little as possible. SV + Gliscor would also be fine if we're not worried about setting a precedent.

Does it need to be viable without sand on the same team, every relevant DPP tour has Ttar at roughly 50% usage and Hippowdon is a thing too so you can bring Glis and still have a chance of dodging your way to a perhaps "undeserved" victory in more than 1 out of every 2 games. Pretty sure that's the reason most ppl wouldn't even consider sand+sand veil as solving the problem.

 

[Eo Ut Mortus]

I support banning Sand Veil from the DPP OU metagame in its entirety. I don't care what the effect is on lower tiers. DPP OU is (was) a standard metagame; it should take precedence over all the alternate metagames, and we really shouldn't have to consider what happens in lower tiers whenever proposing/implementing a widespread metagame policy change. To put it in perspective: why should people who only play OU care about what happens in tiers they may not even play, and vice-versa?

This is why I am proposing the following: after a period of relative stability is established in a given metagame, sever the association between it and the tier(s) from which it was spawned. In this case, this would mean that DPP OU would adopt Sand Veil clause, whereas UU/NU would not (or could if deemed appropriate, according to the discretion of tiering leaders). In essence, this would be what Honko (and anyone who suggested breaking transitivity) suggested, only formalized: tiers would now "ignore" each other.

The main side-effect of this change would be changes to the way in which Pokemon are dropped into / evicted from each tier. As of now, it is dependent on usage and bans. With the removal of usage-based tiering, Pokemon would have to be manually dropped / added to tiers to simulate the same shifts that currently occur. For the most part, I do not see this as problematic, especially since tier leaders can still use usage as a guideline; plus, there will be no more cases of balanced Pokemon exiting tiers due to anomalous overuse in a higher tier (see: DPP UU Umbreon). In response to concerns over possible confusion arising from Pokemon being allowed in a lower tier but not a higher one: I guess I don't see this as a big deal, especially if we officially establish that all tiers are their own separate entities.

Of course, I would suggest this policy would only be implemented after metagames are initially determined (and reach a certain degree of stability), since these tiers do have to be initially determined somehow. Basically, I'm proposing that we start with the current usage-based format to determine initial tiers and then abandon it once tiers have "matured" enough, to the point where a relationship with its parent tier is more superfluous than anything. This would allow us to avoid scenarios like this in the future, instead of slapping a complex ban band-aid on the larger issue of tiering relationships.

 

[BKC]

Since SPL begins in a week, can we decide which ban we're going to implement since everyone seems to agree that SV needs to leave?

I believe we should just ban it in OU and be done with it. No one is going to miss Gabite / Cacturne / Sandslash (who has never been used). Anyone denying that the former two aren't potentially gamebreaking are 1) missing the point 2) wrong; badabing's Cac has trolled a lot of people, plus for those of you who remember BW1 (a metagame where it actually had to consistently compete with other weather!), you'll know how ridiculous that thing can get. Thanks Eo. Then of course there are many who know about Lady Bug's Gabite exploits. I remember a Lucario missing ExtremeSpeed on it and getting Earthquaked into dust when it should've swept.

Losing SV is not going to make much of an impact on UU at all except for ~Stronger~ so I don't know why anyone cares about that. Even if it did make a significant impact, it shouldn't matter seeing how OU is more important than UU, especially in a past generation. Plus, if you really wanted to avoid turning the tier on its head (which, again, you aren't doing here), you can make the ban only apply to OU. I think we should save that discussion for another time/thread, since the tier is still played for UUPL, and for now just get rid of Sand Veil in OU.

 

[Freeroamer]

If an unofficial tour wants to play lower tiers with Sand Veil, they can make their choice much like unofficial tours with DPP Ubers can choose whether to play Farceus or not, same for DPP NU. This is literally just a clause and doesn't need all the tiptoeing around it rofl.