After reading this frankly astounding and well written post, among others, I think I'm changing my stance on this whole Aegislash debate (get it stance change ayyy). But seriously, I'm more or less neutral on Aegislash's presence in OU, and what really hit me was Synchronation pointing out that a meta where we just ban everything isn't a meta he wants to play, and that we cant keep applying the rules of old, more stable metagames to this mess called ORAS. Apart from the truly broken stuff like Lando I, we really shouldn't be this picky with the stuff we're given and ban stuff cuz we can and its difficult to play around. I would reccomend more tiers, but that's just me. But we can't just kick something out of OU that is stable but makes life harder for a lot of other mons; Arceus knows if we did, Talonflame and Lando T would be in the shadow realm right now.
By the same token however, and to be quite blunt, I don't give a damn if Aegislash goes back to ubers. I'd compare it to buying a New 3DS if you already have an older functional model. You'd like a brand new one, but what are you really missing if you don't buy it that you can't already do in your old model? The same goes for OU. If Aegi stays, that's all fine and dandy IMO, and if he goes there is no massive opportunity that was missed.
Now lets change this thread to Lando suspect damnit, we already partially changed it to a KS one.
I also aim this post towards Synchronasion obviously as this quote is aimed into it, but I think we already start to see the main problem with balancing metagames - more and more new Pokemon show up each generation making preparing for all of them obviously impossible in future (if near ? we'll see) and it starts to ALREADY slowly show up. I think this is far more important issue to apply and discuss now then potential Aegislash suspect test.
What I don't like about Aegislash suspect test now is that we try to avoid this issue by introducing one overcentralizing threat avoiding inevitable. It is overcentralizing, no one deny it, but I still think this is the cheapest and easiest way to fix the problem, which exist. While it would remedy the problem at the moment of course, is it really fair to literally eliminate half of metagame with 1 Pokemon which you should run literally on all teams as otherwise it's a total waste ? It's kind of like a kick into the balls of players which prefer to be more creative. I feel like it's not exactly the solution we all look for. Plus when we take into account that it runs around with other controversial powerhouses make this suspect test less credible IMO as I feel like it's not a metagame which we will keep intact for long, shifting it up again in potential future, making metagame balancing even longer and time consuming process. I really feel like we deal with lesser evil here to fix other evil things. As I said I don't like it.
It was said by more then few people (not in this thread) but in overall I think the old approach of throwing everything new to OU and balance things out is approach which I don't think it works anymore. It just take too much time to test everything out. Personally I would before suspecting Aegislash throw out few most overcentralizing, controversial and called broken Pokemon (Landorus, yeah, you) out of metagame AT ONCE and see how it looks after. Most obvious candidates at start would be Mega Metagross, Mega Altaria (not broken IMO, but truly centralizing force) and Landorus-I (list MAY be extended with stuff like Mega Sableye, Mega Diance or Keldeo, etc. but yeah, not really neccesary IMO) and see how metagame shapes after. If we like it we MAY introduce slowly each threat first with potential Aegislash in as well. Why few at once ? Because it would significantly lessen the burden of handling many threats while STILL give some potential suspects to keep thing lively around metagame and avoid it from being stale with potential new suspect tests in future. Also I think it would be more clear in future suspects to see what is truly broken or not without knowing that there are few other potential broken/controversial Pokemon to keep current suspect in check. In other words we would avoid some potential 'broken beat broken' situation which makes suspect less credible and easier to analyze without many controversial obstacles to cloud potential judgement later on. I think MINIMUM we should aim for is Mega Metagross and Landorus-I at the moment and see after what happens. I mention this idea here as first post clearly mention that this Aegislash suspect test is up because OU right now is a metagame which is too match-up reliant and you can't cover every single threat. Aegislash DOES fix up that problem, no one deny it. Although here comes the important question - is Aegislash really a good solution to fix this ? As I mention - is it really worth it to literally delete half of the meta just to fix the issue with TRULY controversial candidate ?
On King Shield - what I don't like about this is that it eliminates the most unique and interesting aspect of Aegislash while I'm on a side that Kings Shield is really annoying, you may still outsmart opponents like in case of protect - with a smart switch. Sure, prediction works both ways, but you may STILL attempt to play around it. Also main problem with this that we can't truly test a metagame with No King Shield Aegislash, which kind of make this idea controversial to say at least. So yeah, this shouldn't show up unless we clearly get a suspect test metagame with No King Shield Aegislash.
On Aegislash itself - I agree it's not truly broken by itself (I still don't call overcentralization as a criteria to make something banned, some sort of overcentralization will exist in all metas, although in this case it is extreme, but still not a fan of this one at all) although it's hella strong as support mon (that pursuit trapping) which make other controversial/potentially broken Pokemon even stronger. Aegislash in the end deserved suspect test, especially when we take into account how close last ban voting was for it, but I can't help but to think that timing for this test just isn't right.
Is Aegislash broken on it's own ? Nope, IMO it's not. It's brilliant Pokemon - it's versatile, hits hard and may take heavy hit(s). It's soo good that there is no reason to not run it, which kills lots of creativity which is the main problem here I have with it. But this reason shouldn't be the reason to ban something out, but this why I dislike his introduction. But I hope people won't use this as the main reason to ban it once they match voting criteria. But this is still Aegislash suspect test and on his own it's truly strong Pokemon, but IMO not broken. Or at least managable enough to keep it in metagame. It MAY be under support criteria, but here comes that 'broken makes thing even broken' thing which I can't help but notice (although Aegislash is so strong on it's own that this argument may not even hold its water and this is why potential judgement on his 'brokeness' may be somewhat clouded here) and wonder if this is truly ideal environment to test it out with other behemots like Landorus-I, MegaMetagross, Keldeo, etc. around which this guy greatly by coincidence support.