Metagame Metagame Discussion Thread

[Heysup]

Yea Berks, I'm not entirely sure if that's really involving the community in the process. It's giving them an input for who would actually be involved in it, but they still won't be. I think the goal now is to add some community involvement while trying to rectify the handcuffing effect it often caused last generation. The reason we didn't start off that way is because the public voting system was unreliable, which was acceptable at the end of a generation, but definitely wouldn't work in the beginning with broken shit running around and SPL around the corner.

Hopefully we see more transparency, and more input from the community. We've been talking about how to alter the process now that the obvious shit is gone.

 

[macle]

council

macle (Co-Leader)
Quote (Co-Leader)
Mambo
Star
Heysup
Shrug
Celestavian
Corporal Levi
Fiend
Sken
ZoroarkForever
fatty
OP

i have no problem with council votes but why are people that dont play pokemon in council? mambo recently came back after 4~6 months without playing and he was never removed, and everyone knows hawk is no longer a pokemon player. macle doenst player either but hes tl so lol

You have no idea who plays the games and who doesn't. You don't know who actually contributes to the council chat because mambo and hawk are some of the more active ones. Please refrain from these uneducated call outs in the future.

 

[Star]

i mean the way i see our current council of 13 people, which I think is a good number, working is if we are all required to participate in public discussion regarding whatever suspect. The issue with rotating councils or voting for council members is that its inherently biased when ur picking someone who's pro-ban or anti-ban. The permanent council system works the way it does because you never know a person's issue on the next suspect. This keeps biases out and leads to solid decisions for the most part. I know a lot of you feel left out probably because 90% of discussion has been behind closed doors. However now that the blatantly broken shit is gone, I think we can make a move toward more public discussion and the people can have a voice in influencing our votes. (I myself was pro-conversion initially but was convinced by some ppl to switch).

 

[Omfuga]

Why are you guys banning cutiefly if, to my understanding, the problem is baton pass?

How many mons need to be banned, or clauses need to be added, until we just ban BP from competitive play?

Seems like more of an overall tiering issue than LC particularly however I don't really get it.... Is drypassing or torchic bullshit so important that you needed to ban a healthy fast mienfoo check to avoid a problem that could literally exist again? If more pokemon get quiver pass are you just gonna ban them all too? I don't really understand this approach, or people constantly defending BP in general tbh

idk if someone posted something like this already or if this was responded to but I cbf to scroll

 

[Vanillish Wafer]

Why are you guys banning cutiefly if, to my understanding, the problem is baton pass?

How many mons need to be banned, or clauses need to be added, until we just ban BP from competitive play?

Seems like more of an overall tiering issue than LC particularly however I don't really get it.... Is drypassing or torchic bullshit so important that you needed to ban a healthy fast mienfoo check to avoid a problem that could literally exist again? If more pokemon get quiver pass are you just gonna ban them all too? I don't really understand this approach, or people constantly defending BP in general tbh

idk if someone posted something like this already or if this was responded to but I cbf to scroll

I'll try to convey what I've seen in this thread and what the policy stuff related to this is.

Well, first there's the precedent of Porygon v Conversion, which had a role to play here, but the main thing influencing this is the fact that there are 2 philosophies in policy. Let's call one of them 1 and talk about that. 1 believes that bans should ban whatever has the least collateral damage to the tier as a whole. So, you could argue by this philosophy that banning Cutiefly did more to the tier than banning Baton Pass would have done. Although, this philosophy's argument against Cutiefly is that removing Baton Pass will limit the roles of other, less dangerous Baton Passers such as Torchic and Mienfoo. H0W3AN described very well why we prefer to ban a Pokemon that breaks a move than a move that breaks a Pokemon; to prevent everything becoming a boring cookie cutter tank because all special roles like Baton Passer have been banned or clauses, severely inhibiting the versatility of several Pokemon to save one Pokemon. Baton Pass clause exists in tiers where Baton Pass is a huge problem, and removing the clause would result in several passers going up to a BL. LC's only broken passer is Cutiefly.

Now, philosophy 2 is that we should not ban moves that only break a single Pokemon, as this philosophy sees limiting move use in a whole tier as much more damaging than banning one Pokemon. Here, Baton Pass itself is not broken. Mienfoo and Torchic do not break Baton Pass. Cutiefly breaks Baton Pass, so rather than hinder the versatility of Mienfoo and Torchic for something only Cutiefly is doing, the council decided to ban Cutiefly. Cutiefly is the only mon breaking Baton Pass, proving the move itself is not broken.

TL;DR Cutiefly breaks Baton Pass, Baton Pass does not break LC.

 

[Omfuga]

quiverpass would be broken regardless of if cutiefly got it or not. Baton pass doesn't break LC because you guys had no good users before, but you have a user now, and you banned it. Also UU had only celebi as a problematic baton passer and decided to ban baton pass instead of celebi, even despite the fact that celebi is broken as fuck on its own. But people are stupid so idk what to say to that. Regardless, 1 mon with 2 boosting moves and a wide variety of baton pass recipients made the move itself banned because of the inherent lack of competitive nature of bp. UU set a precedent and I don't think anyone was upset about the BP ban (except people who think celebi is broken alone). Doesn't make sense for LC not to follow the precedent... Baton pass should be banned from all tiers tbh and this has nothing to do with LC. The move is always going to be a problem and I feel like you guys are just encouraging the fucking continual nonsensical bullshit that tiering communities do to protect baton pass, even if unintentionally.

Basically what i'm trying to say is I still don't understand how cutiefly is deemed "less valuable" to the tier than baton pass. And also, I believe the inherent uncompetitive nature of BP is part of the reason why you should have banned the move.

 

[mad0ka]

UU had other problematic passers in the past though besides Celebi, so it's not like Celebi was an isolated issue like Cutiefly was.

 

[Omfuga]

UU had other problematic passers in the past though besides Celebi, so it's not like Celebi was an isolated issue like Cutiefly was.

?? Like who

See my previous post. Baton Pass itself in LC is not broken. Thus there is no need to ban the move over its only broken abuser. Cutiefly using Baton Pass is broken. Torchic and other Passers are not.

So what you're saying is if 2 mons got quiver pass baton pass is broken in LC

but since only 1 mon gets quiver pass baton pass is not broken in LC???
lol

 

[Vanillish Wafer]

quiverpass would be broken regardless of if cutiefly got it or not. Baton pass doesn't break LC because you guys had no good users before, but you have a user now, and you banned it. Also UU had only celebi as a problematic baton passer and decided to ban baton pass instead of celebi, even despite the fact that celebi is broken as fuck on its own. But people are stupid so idk what to say to that. Regardless, 1 mon with 2 boosting moves and a wide variety of baton pass recipients made the move itself banned because of the inherent lack of competitive nature of bp. UU set a precedent and I don't think anyone was upset about the BP ban (except people who think celebi is broken alone). Doesn't make sense for LC not to follow the precedent... Baton pass should be banned from all tiers tbh and this has nothing to do with LC. The move is always going to be a problem and I feel like you guys are just encouraging the fucking continual nonsensical bullshit that tiering communities do to protect baton pass, even if unintentionally.

Basically what i'm trying to say is I still don't understand how cutiefly is deemed "less valuable" to the tier than baton pass. And also, I believe the inherent uncompetitive nature of BP is part of the reason why you should have banned the move.

See my previous post. Baton Pass itself in LC is not broken. Thus there is no need to ban the move over its only broken abuser. Cutiefly using Baton Pass is broken. Torchic and other Passers are not.

 

[Heysup]

Why are you guys banning cutiefly if, to my understanding, the problem is baton pass?

How many mons need to be banned, or clauses need to be added, until we just ban BP from competitive play?

Seems like more of an overall tiering issue than LC particularly however I don't really get it.... Is drypassing or torchic bullshit so important that you needed to ban a healthy fast mienfoo check to avoid a problem that could literally exist again? If more pokemon get quiver pass are you just gonna ban them all too? I don't really understand this approach, or people constantly defending BP in general tbh

idk if someone posted something like this already or if this was responded to but I cbf to scroll

I think this has been addressed n times but I'll go through it quickly for my friend. Also probably just ignore everyone else.

1. Quiver Dance is what made Cutiefly busted. I used QD + 3 attacks just as much as QD + BP and it was insane in its own right. Fairy/Psychic/Ground is amazing coverage and since Fletch is gone nothing's revenging it. It double resists Fighting priority and resists the now-nerfed Dark-type Sucker Punch. The best shot for offense is using random shitty Pokemon with Bullet Punch. As a council we decided that moves are not targets if it is broken on one specific Pokemon. This precluded us from banning Quiver Dance. I should say I disagree with the policy, but inconsistency makes prior decisions basically meaningless and then we end up with messes like lvl 100 tiers. We have the chance to avoid this at least and keep the metagame clean.

2. BP full chains suck in LC. QuickPassing is a legit strategy, but isn't broken. I'd rather ban Cutiefly then nerf the fuck out of Torchic, Rowlett, Foo, Sewaddle, Togepi, and probably some other shit that isn't inherently toxic to the metagame. I mean Chic->SD Foo->Mudbray is annoying as fuck but it's also pretty easy to stop Torchic. In the PR thread about this, the clear message I got from OU and UU was that they had no fucking idea what their policies actually were and ended up with a mess of a BP clause that none of them seemed to like because it's a complex ban and, ironically, they all agreed that complex bans are undesirable. Non-UU voters seemed to think Celebi was just a ridiculously arbitrary ban in order to slightly nerf a Pokemon and keep it because they were literally in love with Celebi so much. I bet they would all marry Celebi if they could! Even in that tier, I get the gist that Celebi wasn't the only issue. Cutiefly is an isolated problem.

 

[Rowan]

as for the suspect system this gen, there's nothing wrong with just council votes imo.

berks system seems unnecessarily complicated and takes too long.
blara system just made people feel like they had input when really they didn't.
council makes everything quicker, as long as there's transparency with what they're doing there shouldn't be a problem.
i agree with berks in that discussion about which stuff should be suspected should take place, but i feel like that has always happened in a less formal way, like we just use the metagame discussion thread so i don't see any reason to change things

however, i feel like it should be a requirement that council participates in visible suspect threads on the forum otherwise they're out.

just an idea but maybe you could also have like a system where people can apply to be council members if there's space available, and then if people weren't picked after applying the TLs could explain to them why they favoured someone else, to stop people who are overlooked whinging about who's on council.

 

[Drew]

I'm also fine with suspect votes as long as there is a lot of transparency, as many other people said. Rowan's solution sounds wonderful to me.

Also just a suggestion, council could spend like an hour on main server under modchat to discuss the suspect and post the logs for full transparency on the discussion.

 

[Liquidocelot]

There is more than one flying type in the tier you know. And you make it sound like Vullaby is the only hero holding back the horrible monsters that are the evil nation of Fighting types. This is wrong. Fairies, Poisons, and other Flying types all exist and are able to check Vullaby. Ponyta and Larvesta both run Flame Body, which also helps check Fighting types. Doduo is a fantastic pokemon right now that can deal with fighting types. Mudbray is also an excellent mon that can deal with most fighting types quite well thanks to its ability. Vullaby is definitly not the only pokemon that is checking fighting types, and if you believe this you should probably play LC some more.

I mean I was making a hyperbole for a joke, I know there's plenty of counters to them as otherwise they'd all be broken. Also I have some good experience in LC so please don't be rude.

 

[Agammemnon]

I have to agree with Omfuga on this.
Overall on the porygon/cutiefly bans ; we all know that complex bans are not necessarily healthy, but instead of banning 2 interesting pokémons that could provide a lot of diversity to the metagame, have you, Dear Council who's making decisions for all of us in the darkness, even considered banning either the moves themselves or the association of the pokémon + the move?
1) Banning the moves themselves : It is not necessarily good in terms of diversity as it denies the moves to other pokémons (Such as Torchic). However it still allows for the whole player database to play the aforementioned pokémons, which, in the end, offers more diversity and thus more fun. (And most importantly, more fidelity to the cartridge game, which is the goal in the end)
If I remember correctly, BPing speed + another stat was forbidden in ORAS ; why not just do that ?
If I remember correctly, Swagger was banned in ORAS ; why not just consider that ?

2) Banning the association of the move + the pokémon (or the item) : If Porygon was not allowed to hold Conversion + Normalium Z, the problem would be solved ; if anyone ever wants to play Porygon with Conversion just for the sake of it, he can. The reality of the cartridge is preserved. The broken thing (Conversion + Normalium Z) is out of the way, which is what was wanted in the end.
As for Cutiefly, it has been mentioned that it could be an interesting non-broken mon who can check some other mons (Mienfoo for instance) but can also be checked easily if it cannot BP the QD boosts.
Instead of that, we, the player database, are denied the use of 2 pokémons.


In the end, I wonder why this council thing seems so secret and underground (I'm pretty sure it's not really, but still. It seems so.) and most importantly, why is the community consulted AFTERWARDS ? If it were up to me, I would consider asking people officially (aka in a poll)
The question that I really need you to ask yourselves is this one : By removing the association of a Pokémon + move ( + item !) that is so-called broken, and by not removing it in a specific way, don't you end up with far less diversity that if you had done nothing? Of course the meta needs to settle down for this question to be answered definitely, but I truly believe this is a valid question.


Have a nice day.

 

[Berks]

I have to agree with Omfuga on this.
Overall on the porygon/cutiefly bans ; we all know that complex bans are not necessarily healthy, but instead of banning 2 interesting pokémons that could provide a lot of diversity to the metagame, have you, Dear Council who's making decisions for all of us in the darkness, even considered banning either the moves themselves or the association of the pokémon + the move?
1) Banning the moves themselves : It is not necessarily good in terms of diversity as it denies the moves to other pokémons (Such as Torchic). However it still allows for the whole player database to play the aforementioned pokémons, which, in the end, offers more diversity and thus more fun. (And most importantly, more fidelity to the cartridge game, which is the goal in the end)
If I remember correctly, BPing speed + another stat was forbidden in ORAS ; why not just do that ?
If I remember correctly, Swagger was banned in ORAS ; why not just consider that ?

2) Banning the association of the move + the pokémon (or the item) : If Porygon was not allowed to hold Conversion + Normalium Z, the problem would be solved ; if anyone ever wants to play Porygon with Conversion just for the sake of it, he can. The reality of the cartridge is preserved. The broken thing (Conversion + Normalium Z) is out of the way, which is what was wanted in the end.
As for Cutiefly, it has been mentioned that it could be an interesting non-broken mon who can check some other mons (Mienfoo for instance) but can also be checked easily if it cannot BP the QD boosts.
Instead of that, we, the player database, are denied the use of 2 pokémons.


In the end, I wonder why this council thing seems so secret and underground (I'm pretty sure it's not really, but still. It seems so.) and most importantly, why is the community consulted AFTERWARDS ? If it were up to me, I would consider asking people officially (aka in a poll)
The question that I really need you to ask yourselves is this one : By removing the association of a Pokémon + move ( + item !) that is so-called broken, and by not removing it in a specific way, don't you end up with far less diversity that if you had done nothing? Of course the meta needs to settle down for this question to be answered definitely, but I truly believe this is a valid question.


Have a nice day.

I'm wondering if you noticed that this thread exists, as it contains all of the council's votes on the two quick suspects and explains them plenty well in my eyes.

It has also generally been constant that Smogon metagames avoid complex bans to a large extent, which would make like half of your proposal irrelevant. Overall, while it may not have been my first choice to ban Porygon or Cutiefly, I think making those two decisions was important and ultimately good for the metagame.

 

[Agammemnon]

I do, Berks, but if you quote the Cutiefly votes, you can get things like this out of the thread :

Following the logic set by our last suspect, we do not ban moves--even unique moves--unless absolutely necessary. If we are to ban a move it should be broken on enough viable Pokemon that it is clearly the issue; Quiver Dance is not the case, though it is extremely good yet only busted when used in tandem with BP

i was told this was the option for a man in my predicament? although i recognize there is a problem with cutiefly, i do not believe it is indicative of cutiefly being broken, but rather due to a broken move in that of baton pass. for this reason, as well as there not being a viable third option, i can't justify banning cutiefly entirely, and thus i don't it should be banned.

I vote for ban Cutiefly.

I'm really against this and I think Quiver Dance is totally the only broken part in Cutiefly, however, we already set a bad precedent with Porygon so we have to show consistency.

These are just three examples amongst examples for and against Cutiefly's ban.[/quote]


My point is that even the so-called Council is not unanimous about the necessity of banning a Pokémon because the Pokémon itself, Cutiefly in this case, is not necessarily broken. It is the association of Cutiefly + Baton Pass which is malevolent.

I can also quote this one to underline my statement :

I vote to ban Cutiefly; I disagree with banning the pokemon when we can just as well solve the issue by banning a facet of the pokemon without collateral or complex bans, but seeing how we decided to set poor precedent by banning Porygon instead of Conversion, we should follow this precedent (which had an even stronger case to not ban the Pokemon) until the Porygon decision is reversed.

My point is, we seem to only rely on one precedent in this gen, the also-questionable to my eyes Porygon ban, to settle all next ones. While this might be a smart move, the Smogon community has also proven in a somehow recent past (ORAS) that sometimes banning a move (Swagger) or even an item (Soul Dew, DPP) might be a valid solution. I just want to question, in an open debate, if banning two likely healthy pokémons, Porygon and Cutiefly, is the best move available.
EDIT : tl;dr is it really better to ban a pokémon than a move in a smaller metagame like LC ?

 

[Celestavian]

Quiver Dance is not a broken move. Baton Pass is not a broken move. Conversion and Z-Conversion are not broken moves. This is why the Pokemon themselves were banned and not the moves. It is not relevant (or even entirely correct to say) that a metagame with Porygon and Cutiefly nerfed would be a more diverse metagame, it matters that the moves themselves are not the broken part. Porygon was broken because its unique traits combined with the power of Z-Conversion made it severely overpowered. Cutiefly was banned because the combination of its own positive traits mixes very well with Quiver Dance and Baton Pass to make an extremely threatening sweeper who can just Baton Pass out of threats it can't beat. The idea that we can just nerf broken Pokemon for the sake of a "diverse" metagame, which I think we have right now anyway, is absurd. Just because a Pokemon has a unique move that we could ban instead to keep our favorite toys doesn't mean we are justified in doing so.

And yes, the "Dear Council" most certainly considered banning Conversion and Quiver Dance + Baton Pass, we just decided against it, for the better in my opinion.

 

[tcr]

My point is that even the so-called Council is not unanimous about the necessity of banning a Pokémon because the Pokémon itself, Cutiefly in this case, is not necessarily broken. It is the association of Cutiefly + Baton Pass which is malevolent.

I can also quote this one to underline my statement :


My point is, we seem to only rely on one precedent in this gen, the also-questionable to my eyes Porygon ban, to settle all next ones. While this might be a smart move, the Smogon community has also proven in a somehow recent past (ORAS) that sometimes banning a move (Swagger) or even an item (Soul Dew, DPP) might be a valid solution. I just want to question, in an open debate, if banning two likely healthy pokémons, Porygon and Cutiefly, is the best move available.
EDIT : tl;dr is it really better to ban a pokémon than a move in a smaller metagame like LC ?

The reason keeping a form of precedent is important is because without it our metagames have no basis. As a whole Smogon already faces a ton of heat from the pokemon community about "picking and choosing mons," "verlisify this verlisify that" for the exact reason of inconsistent tiering, which is then percieved as playing favorites and dragging and dropping certain pokemon in a certain way. Without any sort of foundation for what constitutes our banning policy, a tiering community is no different than a group of basement friends playing on their link cable and banning legendaries and psuedo-legendaries: in short they're just "making it all up." Why does that matter? As influential as Smogon is, I would argue that as they basically represent anything and everything related to competitive Pokemon just "making it all up" doesn't cut it as a viable policy. Its too inconclusive and favors whatever ideal metagame the current council would dream of. Its not a solid enough foundation to solidify a tier as "viable."

Moves generally aren't banned unless they are heavily found to be uncompetitive, as in the case of Swagger. Swagger was not just "broken move." It was broken in the same way that Sheer Cold is broken, in that it just fundamentally breaks a core principle of foundation: counterplay. There is extremely little counterplay found for Swagger, save one ability found on 20 Pokemon out of ~800 and some rather gimmicky items. It introduced coinflipping into the metagame, to the point where entire strategies would be based around it, used in tournament play, and thus invalidating the authenticity of the tournament (sorry, but a win where it is 100% rng and not just some old hax is not a true win). That is the reason it was banned, and that is entirely seperate from the traditional thinking of banning. I won't comment on Soul Dew, because I was not present at the time of its relevancy, but I will comment that it could probably be argued to be the first iteration of "mega" pokemon, that Soul Dew enhanced lati@s were different enough from regular to warrant being tier seperately, although it is somewhat of a stretch. Regardless, there is precedent for items to be banned if they are found to be unique. This is completely fine because items are seperate from the pokemon. Yes, Pokemon hold items, but no they aren't intrinsic to the Pokemon. By this I mean that moves are oftentimes unique to Pokemon, but it all depends on the Pokemon. What makes two Pokemon with teh same stat spread, ability, etc, different is its movepool. Any Pokemon can hold any item, yet not all Pokemon can have every move, is the issue.

As several council members have stated in the past, some don't agree that Cutiefly without Baton Pass is not broken. I believe Heysup mentioned QD 3 Attack as being particularly strong for him. Others would argue that Porygon has always been an extremely borderline Pokemon for the metagame, and the introduction of this new set is simply the breaking point. I don't believe that keeping either "healthy" Pokemon by neutering certain aspects of their being is in line with what our banning policy should be, as that simply opens us up to picking and choosing what stays in the tier. (What defines healthy? Is Porygon healthy simply bc it was in the meta for a while? Why can't Meditite be in the meta? Why can't Blaziken be in OU?).

An entirely seperate discussion could be "is Baton Pass broken?" To which I would argue no. It is simply something you need to prepare for, like anything else.

 

[Berks]

I do, Berks, but if you quote the Cutiefly votes, you can get things like this out of the thread :






These are just three examples amongst examples for and against Cutiefly's ban.

They relied on a precedent they chose to set not even two weeks ago! The difference between Swagger and these moves on these Pokemon was that Swagger introduced extra luck into the game and was deemed uncompetitive, which is completely unrelated to these broken moves/Pokemon. Swagger doesn't even compare to these at all! The open debate about whether it was better to ban two broken Pokemon (because they were, indeed, broken with the moves and stats and abilities they had access to) or the moves that broke them already took place, and frankly it seems odd that you choose to question it after all the relevant debate took place. In essence, it boils down to the fact that if other Pokemon got Z-Conversion, it wouldn't necessarily be broken. This is in contrast to SonicBoom, which is broken on literally any Pokemon that gets it, or Swagger or OHKO moves, which are uncompetitive on literally any Pokemon that get them. That was determined to be the divisive factor; therefore, the council determined that Porygon itself was broken due to its access to Z-Conversion. Likewise, Cutiefly was deemed broken due to its access to Baton Pass AND Quiver Dance. Baton Pass isn't broken on Rowlet, and Quiver Dance wouldn't be broken on, say, Sewaddle. Therefore, we ban Cutiefly. While originally I agreed with you, that we should ban the moves, the issue with that is the potential for inconsistency, which itself has the potential to create a complicated and inaccessible metagame. That's why, in my understanding, the council elected to ban the two Pokemon.

Regardless of whether you agree with them or not, the council are sticking to their decisions amid controversy and debate, which deserves mad respect in my opinion!

 

[Agammemnon]

And yes, the "Dear Council" most certainly considered banning Conversion and Quiver Dance + Baton Pass, we just decided against it, for the better in my opinion.

There is no need to feel attacked or threatened by a simple courtesy. That was not passive agressive behaviour, I was just trying to be polite.
I do agree with you that the combination of their traits + the different moves/zmoves is what made them broken. This is why I raise my voice against the ban of these Pokémon.
Another example would be the ban of Sand Veil ; we did not ban Gliscor. We banned Sand Veil. Why not just take this precedent and ban Z-Conversion, or QD-Pass? It does not seem irrational to me.
To me, the decision of banning those 2 pokémons who got broken only because of those combinations seems VERY arbitrary, as the community has, through the gens and the tiers, already banned something else than pokémons.
[And again, on the other hand, the whole "Blaziken package" got banned when it was given Speed Boost]

tcr, I get your point. As for Soul Dew, Latias was deemed ok without it (For a while, at least) but broken with it. So the community banned Soul Dew. Do you see what I mean ? That's a precedent which could have easily been applied to Porygon and its Z-Move, in my opinion.
Berks, your post echoes with tcr's and it is true that my example of Swagger was not necessarily the best one, given its heavy RNG side.

I do realize that I'm playing the devil's advocate here, that my opinion is not going popular, but I don't care. A part of me even agrees on the whole Cutiefly ban. I just want you to be sure that you have the whole picture under your eyes before voting for future bans, avoiding to only take into account the precedents that suit you. (I am not saying that THIS situation is happening here.)
I don't expect the council to seriously consider my opinion as decisive and I will play the tier nonetheless ; I just enjoy it and want to be sure that it is going to be ruled with the most objectivity one can have, considering every decision and its consequences.

 

[Berks]

There is no need to feel attacked or threatened by a simple courtesy. That was not passive agressive behaviour, I was just trying to be polite.
I do agree with you that the combination of their traits + the different moves/zmoves is what made them broken. This is why I raise my voice against the ban of these Pokémon.
Another example would be the ban of Sand Veil ; we did not ban Gliscor. We banned Sand Veil. Why not just take this precedent and ban Z-Conversion, or QD-Pass? It does not seem irrational to me.
To me, the decision of banning those 2 pokémons who got broken only because of those combinations seems VERY arbitrary, as the community has, through the gens and the tiers, already banned something else than pokémons.
[And again, on the other hand, the whole "Blaziken package" got banned when it was given Speed Boost]

tcr, I get your point. As for Soul Dew, Latias was deemed ok without it (For a while, at least) but broken with it. So the community banned Soul Dew. Do you see what I mean ? That's a precedent which could have easily been applied to Porygon and its Z-Move, in my opinion.
Berks, your post echoes with tcr's and it is true that my example of Swagger was not necessarily the best one, given its heavy RNG side.

I do realize that I'm playing the devil's advocate here, that my opinion is not going popular, but I don't care. A part of me even agrees on the whole Cutiefly ban. I just want you to be sure that you have the whole picture under your eyes before voting for future bans, avoiding to only take into account the precedents that suit you. (I am not saying that THIS situation is happening here.)
I don't expect the council to seriously consider my opinion as decisive and I will play the tier nonetheless ; I just enjoy it and want to be sure that it is going to be ruled with the most objectivity one can have, considering every decision and its consequences.

They didn't ban Gliscor because Sand Veil was also available on Gligar, allowing someone to use the exact same strategy with a different Pokemon. Also, Sand Veil was deemed uncompetitive because it increased evasion, introducing more luck. This is like Swagger, which was, again, not broken, but uncompetitive. Those two introduced unreasonably important luck into any given match and were banned because they could do that on any Pokemon who had them. Z-Conversion and QuiverPass were broken because of the Pokemon that had access to them. These strategies do not introduce unreasonable luck into the match and are therefore not comparable to Sand Veil and Swagger. Soul Dew is similar: every single Pokemon that benefitted from Soul Dew was broken, and if other Pokemon had access to it they likely would've been broken as well. That is not true of Z-Conversion in LC; we see that in Z-Trick-or-Treat Pumpkaboo being a threat, but a manageable one. An automatic Choice Specs and Assault Vest boost in a tier with no Eviolite would break a lot of Pokemon, but Porygon is arguably one of very few Pokemon bulky enough to have gone without Eviolite for Normalium Z, and it is one of the few with a movepool to take advantage of Conversion, making it unique in its brokenness. Therefore, we ban the Pokemon. Cutiefly was arguably broken even without Baton Pass with its amazing typing, access to Quiver Dance, reliable recovery, and excellent coverage. It was unique in its brokenness, so it was banned. Swagger and Sand Veil make the Pokemon that use them uncompetitive, but not uniquely so. When a move makes many Pokemon broken in an un-unique way, we ban the move. That is not true of Z-Conversion or QuiverPass, so we banned the Pokemon.

 

[Rowan]

did people complaining about it suddenly after the bans took place even take notice of the metagame discussion thread when discussions were taking place or of the related policy review thread? just find it funny how people suddenly come up complaining about the changes yet took no part in the metagame discussion thread beforehand or the site wide policy review thread where people spoke about banning pokemon vs moves.

I'm pretty sure council did consider banning individual moves and decided against it for whatever reason, if you read or partook in the metagame discussion thread when the porygon ban was taking place you'd know this

 

[mad0ka]

Moving on from Cutiefly back to future suspects, what I'd really like to see is a council vote on Drifloon. Drifloon took a significant hit from new mechanics changes and metagame trends introduced by gen7, to the point of its previous acro-stall set being pretty sub-par. Burn only deals one damage per turn now, meaning it can't even out-stall Pawniard or Archen. Mudbray happily gains defense boosts from acrobatics and doesn't mind taking a will-o since it can just rest it away, and Berry Juice Mag is almost standard now, which deals with this set easily enough anyways. Not to mention, no Drifloon sets can even be a near-foolproof spinblocker anymore, because Analytic Staryu and Alola-Sandshrew both beat it.

So then, there's Drifloon's CM set. Despite Porygon having been banned, CM Floon still has a myriad of answers. There are DD Scraggy, NP Vullaby, Munchlax, Scarf Amaura, physical Ponyta, Taillow, and Scarf Magnemite as sure counters, BU Rufflet, Pawniard (since it can no longer be out-stalled) & Carvanha as solid checks, and then many other situational checks. CM Floon can't afford to run substitute, so anything with Knock Off deals with it relatively well too.

However, many people want to first deal with trapping first instead of dealing with Drifloon. It's clear that Drifloon isn't broken, so council-vote unban wouldn't be controversial or take any time at all, while on the other hand, suspecting trapping would be a potentially month-long process because the community has both passionate and conflicting opinions about Diglett and Gothita. The reasoning behind the Kokoloko method of tiering was to have the LC meta prepped before SPL, and there's no way that a trapping is going to be dealt with before SPL starts. If Diglett and Gothita are suspected first, then that means that a Drifloon unban is pushed off until sometime in the middle of SPL as well. Having two meta changes in the middle of SPL seems somewhat contrary to the original goal of our implementation of the Kokoloko method, so it would be ideal for this reason to deal with Drifloon before SPL starts. Furthermore, the only reason Drifloon was banned this generation was because of the Kokoloko method being used, so not dealing with a consequence of using this method before moving onto less-pressing-in-comparison-to Porygon-and-Cutiefly issues like trapping or Vullaby does not make sense to me.

 

[Sken]

I don't think Drifloon has gotten worse this gen and there isn't much reasoning after its unban other than "burn got nerfed". Yes, it is harder to outstall pawniard and roost archen now, but that still means that your counter (which is a physical attacker) is getting its attack reduced by half and becoming deadweight for the rest of the game.

Recycle-wow-acro-sub drifloon isn't doing anything to resttalk mudbray, however it still beats the rest of its sets (bj, scarf) with ease. Anyways, it's still able to stall the opponent's rock slides/heavy slams/rock tombs/whatever, so none of them touch each other. Even then, Drifloon can use other sets to be a true Mudbray counter, just like hex cm or others, while Mudbray has no other options to beat the balloon.

Another thing I've heard about Drifloon is that it isn't that good as a spinblocker because analytic Staryu is a thing now. However, the truth is that it never was a good spinblocker against Staryu anyways, since it could get scald burnt anytime it tried to switch in preventing rapid spin, and once drifloon got burnt it was really difficult for it to work. This has become even worse as it getting scald burnt isn't that big of a deal as it was last gen.

I honestly don't see a reason to retest it but my answer would still be no.

tldr floon still 1v1s a large portion of the meta and is still unhealthy for it

 

[fitzy72]

Thanks to the council members for giving reasons for the bans when requested.

RE Drifloon:

The question right now should not be "Is drifloon broken in SM LC?" since we literally don't know and can only theorymon but instead "Has enough changed since it was banned in ORAS that we can reasonably believe it might be balanced?". I agree with Madokas post that popular Pokemon shifts, new introductions and the huge burn nerf mean that it very well could not be broken this generation.

If there is agreement that there are no pressing issues with Pokemon currently available then Drifloon is the clear obvious choice to test from LC Ubers.