Honestly, I see very little good coming out of this. There is nothing inherently broken about Sand Veil, and it in and of itself is not why Garchomp was banned. It is just being used here as a scapegoat to give a reason to test it again. Honestly, enough has changed in OU that it is questionable if Garchomp would still be broken at all, so there is no need for such a scapegoat. This has nothing to do with Sand Veil and it should not be removed just as an excuse to do it. If we are going to test Garchomp I don't see why we aren't testing the full Garchomp. Obviously Cacturne and co have shown that there is nothing wrong with the ability. So why aren't we following the path we took with Blaziken and testing pokemon as a whole? Its like trying to put all the blame on a mediocre ability in order to let us test two variables at once, which is never a good idea.
That being said, I am glad that we are at least doing this test. I'd like to see how Garchomp fairs in the metagame, and while I personally believe having Sand Veil would help it balance the game back away from rain, it still will be an interesting tool for many types of teams in this metagame.
I wholeheartedly agree with this post. It's pretty obvious that Sand Veil is a scapegoat for Garchomp's brokenness, when in reality Sand Veil is a thoroughly mediocre ability that marginally affects the metagame even if Garchomp is allowed, especially in the Rain-dominated BW2 OU metagame. Even in the Sand-dominated BW1 metagame in which Garchomp was allowed, Garchomp had severe limitations and was barely broken because Sand Veil facilitated a sweep. Garchomp with Sand Veil at the time was barely broken, and this metagame is much less friendly to Sand Offense as the previous one was. I see no reason why Sand Veil Garchomp would be broken in OU, or at least there's no reason to believe it will be egregiously broken and unworthy of a test.
Furthermore, it's pretty terrible that we want to ban Sand Veil as a whole from supposedly every metagame in order to shoehorn one Pokemon back into OU. Sand Veil is not broken in OU. It is seen on one uncommon set on one Pokemon in OU. It is not seen in any other tier. There is no argument that Sand Veil is broken in OU, and there is no argument that Sand Veil has a giant adverse effect on the OU metagame. It is also extremely hypocritical to do this to Garchomp and not immediately un-ban Blaziken while banning Speed Boost to the Uber tier, but nobody is suggesting that because it's ridiculous, as is unbanning Garchomp without Sand Veil.
Sand Veil is part of Garchomp and part of the OU metagame. Garchomp with Sand Veil will restore a sense of balance between the two dominant weathers in OU, making it a more healthy metagame for those who believe in that banning philosophy (which I do not, but that's for another time...). The only reason I could see for not releasing Garchomp in its entirety is the "luck=bad" argument, which shouldn't be entertained by any serious Pokemon community.
Also, can people stop saying that "broken is subjective so it's okay to be subjective."? This is an entirely made-up argument that basically is an excuse for members of a council to tailor a metagame to their liking (I mean absolutely no disrespect towards any council members with the previous sentence). I would like to restate what Jimera0 said in his previous post:
My point was that if we use enjoyability as an actual criteria that it opens up the doors for individuals high up to abuse it.
If we agree to disregard the
degree of subjectivity in our bans then Smogon's tiering system loses 100% of its credibility. Smogon is a great site and produces the best competitive Pokemon knowledge and tier lists in the world because of the rigor of our banning process, the knowledge of our community, and the hard work of our contributors. If we replace the Smogon Philosophy, which currently reads that only Pokemon that are objectively broken, with a "i don't like it go to ubers" philosophy, then Smogon's great tiering system erodes. Not all philosophies of banning are equal, and we cannot treat every argument as just as good as the next. If we tolerate subjectivity, then we no longer have a standard of tiering and our tiers will become less consistent as people enter and exit the councils and we will no longer have the best tiering system there is. It's okay to accept that there may be some subjectivity in banning, but that's because it's impossible to determine objective brokenness. We can approximate objective brokenness through the rigor of our tests, though, and any competent tiering system must try to reduce the quantity of subjectivity.
also,
emirinho said:
Some of the players here dont understand competitive battling and the main concepts of it. -Moves,abilities and items that only work on luck are not accepted-.
They have been since Gen III when Smogon opened its digital doors. Competitive battling has always had an element of luck to it, and the Characteristics of a Desirable Pokemon Metagame have identified luck in moderation as a positive aspect of the metagame. Game Freak gave us a game in which luck can play an important role; to try to remove luck from the game at every turn is to bastardize the game of Pokemon.