The entire issue with OU tiering goes back to Mega-Sableye in ORAS. The mon was banned on the literal last day before the next gen was released. So that means, technically, there was a broken mon running around for years in the meta. It just wasn't obviously "broken" it was deemed "unhealthy." Thus, it brought down the level of competitiveness and enjoyment of the tier for the entire length of a generation. This could have been avoided if tiering policy didn't just look for the easily identifiable broken mons.
OU being the most permissive was fine before GF started making things like Ceaseless Edge, Good as Gold, Supreme Overlord, etc. Past OU councils have tried to adjust the game before, such as banning a Sand Rush mon on the same team as a sand setter. There is a precedent for removing unhealthy elements from the game. Smogon OU started out as one thing, then has morphed into something else over the years. Remember, this conversation is only being had due to the widespread distaste of our current meta, back up by hard data from community feedback. I'm not convinced adhering to dogma is the best solution right now.
As for a Ghold-less meta, all spinners get much better without balloon Gold hard stopping them. Tusk/Treads could predict and click Ice Spinner/Knock which means Pult isn't coming in, as if were coming in on a Headlong anyway but I digress. A bulky Gold can come in on Ice Spinner/Knock, a worst case scenario, and still come out on top. Keeping hazards and taking a mon. Let's not forget Mortal Spin either. Glimm could have an entirely new role as a mid-game removal tool. The main point tho is Corv being able to defog again would be gigantic for Balance structures and it's disingenuous to suggest otherwise. "That's it" is such a wildly dismissive attitude towards the literal best tool multiple playstyles have for hazard removal.
Just gonna quickly inverse your logic here- according to your list there are 3 mons that might be broken due to BE. These happen to be some of the most influential mons in the meta. You also notate that these mons won't be banned, but if they were banned it would be due to their BE sets. Why not keep these 3 valuable mons but lower their power level as to remove all doubt of their brokenness?i agree moon is stupid as hell but jesus christ people, give up on the booster energy narrative already. no one's buying it. let's take a look at the data, in simple visual form, to figure out why:
so, even if i'm extremely generous and assume that all of the first three categories are broken (they aren't) and that booster energy is the single shared element breaking all of them (it isn't), that's still six data points against fourteen. you're outnumbered more than two to one in the absolute best case for your argument
now if we factor in that flutter is obviously still broken without booster, bundle didn't even use booster, and neither valiant nor bolt are particularly problematic right now, we have exactly two cases left: roaring moon and gouging fire. booster energy played a role in the gouging fire ban, certainly, but would i say it was the thing that caused the ban? jury's still out on that one. and frankly, we've had enough argument about gouging fire to last a lifetime so let's not let the jury back in. (don't worry, all the jurors have coats and stuff, they'll be fine. if anything it's probably nice for them to get a breath of fresh air instead of being cooped up in the courthouse all day)
and then there's this asshole. roaring moon. angry boomerang. spicy croissant. the prequel to the sequel to salamence. marvel's what if they gave garchomp dragon dance. whatever you want to call it, it's definitely a fucker, and i for one would be very glad to see it go. and yes, this one is exclusively because of booster energy. but arguing for a booster energy ban just to deal with one mon is overkill. worse, unlike rage fist and a handful of other examples, this has actually relevant crossfire—a ban of booster energy would hurt great tusk in a meta that's entirely held together by great tusk, and it hurts treads a pretty significant amount too. couldn't we rather, i dunno, ban the one single mon that booster energy is breaking and leave the other dozen or so alone? i'm under no illusion that a roaring moon ban is ever going to happen as much as i want it to, but it's definitely more sensible than a booster energy ban, so why not argue for that instead?
More importantly, this isn't all the data as there are things you can't easily quantify. The speed tiers are askew. Moth, Val, Treads and sometimes Moon/Tusk come with a built in Choice Scarf. What does that do to a game where speed is often everything. What is the hesitancy for making Bolt's T-Claps 2HKOs instead of OHKO?
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Most of this is arguing just to argue so please keep that in mind please lol. I'm not even fighting nor expect a Ghold suspect or a BE suspect but I would love to see a more solution-orientated approach. There is an issue with the tier. Doing nothing won't change that. It's better to look into the possibilities. I don't think a Gold/BE suspect is that crazy when my logic is 'something is better than nothing'. Once again, for emphasis, this isn't a case of trying to fix something that isn't broken. The tier objectively needs improvements. You could make a chart for Tera Blast and try and show how few mons use it, but that's not all the data, as it isn't all the data here. If we ban TB and get Leki back maybe that extra spinner does wonders for the tier, I don't know, but I'd rather find out than just ride out SV in its current form for another year or so.
This was never going to work. The concept had a lot of potential but needed more time in the oven. I would love to see a do-over of the idea, maybe give us a list of things we can suspect next and have a community survey. Or just drop Fin and see what happens. I say refund reaction score points to anyone who put it into a suspect then try again but with more guard rails and clear info.
