BW OU Diglett and Excadrill Suspect Discussion

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone. After conducting a recent exit poll in which 21 people who have had noteworthy results in recent BW OU tournaments discussed their thoughts on the metagame and potentially controversial Pokemon, the BW OU council has determined that we would like to act on Diglett and Excadrill. Before we move ahead and act on either subject, we feel it is best to open a Policy Review thread to discuss the exact line-of-action that should be taken (i.e: what people should be voting on). Neither Pokemon is as straightforward as most other potential suspects and therefore we feel that having an open dialogue on the matter to help us reach a conclusion would be best.

With regards to Diglett, the discussion would be if we were to vote on the banning of the Pokemon Diglett or the ability Arena Trap. Additionally, if we were to decide to focus on the latter, then if we should lump it with the strictly better Shadow Tag or simply make it an Arena Trap vote.

With regards to Excadrill, the discussion would be if we were to vote on banning of the Pokemon Excadrill or the ability Sand Rush. Additionally, if we were to decide to focus on the latter, then if we should lump the Sand Rush ban with a ban of Swift Swim and Chlorophyll to make the banlist of BW OU much more simplified given the past history of complex bans.

In the next post below, I have included the responses to the BW OU council's latest exit poll from those who consented to publicly disclose their thoughts. This insight is quite valuable to the BW OU council and will be kept in mind moving forward, too.

tl;dr - Use this thread to discuss how you think a vote involving Diglett and Excadrill should be handled by the BW OU council moving forward.

 

[Finchinator]

Responses from those who consented for them to be made public

 

[Googly]

just vote on banning diglett. i'm perfectly happy to use trapinch in its place.

 

[dice]

my views are public but i'll try to kickstart discussion.

i think an arena trap ban would be best as a clear cut answer for cheesy sun strategies, but it forces us to reconsider shadow tag. i value gothitelle's presence, but understand the inconsistency in the process. operating within a very liberal and minimalist reality of tiering, it's probably best to just ban trapping abilities as a whole.

also supporting the sand rush ban. excadrill has added a lot to this tier and we would be doing a huge disservice to the metagame if we banned him wholesale.

 

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone. The BW Council will be holding a vote on Arena Trap in the current metagame! We have ultimately reached this conclusion after discussing the matter internally with the results of the recent survey kept in mind seeing as this thread was not posted in too much. However, we still do value everyone's input and hope to continue receiving it moving forward. As for the vote, it will have the following options:

• Ban -- remove Arena Trap from the current metagame
• Do not ban -- keep Arena Trap in the current metagame

The criteria to qualify to vote will be the following:

• Played at least 3 WCOP games in BW and had a win/loss of at least .500
• Finished in the top 12 of the most recent BW Cup (round 7 or further)
• Finished in the top 12 in BW points in the most recent Smogon Tour season (13 points or more)
• At least 3 BW games played with two or more wins in SPL 9 or at least 5 BW games played in SPL 9

The following users can participate in this vote:

voters

undisputed, Ojama, TDK, Triangles, ABR, MetalGro$$, Kebab mlml, Luigi, Blackoblivion, FLCL, Malekith, Empo, Energy, odeio stall, Googly, Eo Ut Mortus, Lycans, Sam I Am, Jimmy Turtwig, M Dragon, Googly, blunder, obii, Tricking, Bomber., soTsoT, reyscarface, lax, bro fist, Posho, lax, Finchinator, Asuya, Ace-11, dice, Sand Castle, SoulWind, McMeghan, BKC, ZoroDark, Smurf., Shoka, elodin, Souf, LuckOverSkill

How to vote? Simply PM me ( Finchinator ) one of the two options listed above (Ban or Do not ban). You cannot edit your vote once you have PMd me and to assure this, I will respond upon receiving your vote. Arena Trap will need to get 60% ban votes to get banned

The deadline is September 27th at 11:59pm GMT-4! Please send your PM to me before then; there will be no exceptions made for late voters.

---

Do note that, as alluded to above, the BW Council will be acting on Excadrill in the near future, so keep an eye out for that after this vote.

 

[Finchinator]

tagging all voters:
undisputed, Ojama, TDK, Triangles, ABR, MetalGro$$, Kebab mlml, Luigi, Blackoblivion, FLCL, Malekith, Empo, Energy, odeio stall, Googly, Eo Ut Mortus, Lycans, Sam I Am, Jimmy Turtwig, M Dragon, Googly, blunder, obii, Tricking, Bomber., soTsoT, reyscarface, lax, bro fist, Posho, lax, Finchinator, Asuya, Ace-11, dice, Sand Castle, SoulWind, McMeghan, BKC, ZoroDark, Smurf., Shoka, elodin, Souf, LuckOverSkill

 

[ABR]

Finchinator will dugtrio be unbanned if arena is banned?

 

[Laurel]

Can anyone present a strong argument for banning Diglett / Trapinch other than cheese? I don’t have a strong lean to either side.

 

[We Three Kings]

Can we expect something to be done about the current BW council? I believe the councils were formed to avoid poor tiering decisions, but this case has been handled extremely terribly. I really, really like this tier, but I am extremely scared about what will happen to it in the future, and I do not trust the current council to make the correct decisions, as they have given me no reason to based on their actions in the past.

 

[dom]

I did a stupid shitpost about this that got me infracted but genuine question: why does it seem like every bw tiering decision these days is about trying to get rid of anything that threatens sand balance?

 

[lax]

On behalf of The Jerk, my vote on [Arena Trap] is No Ban.

 

[elodin]

Isn't it kind of pathetic that there is a suspect being held about this? This thread was posted 1 week ago and there were 2 replies, one of them a meme post and the other one a response from a council member himself (correct me if I'm wrong), whose opinion was already expressed on the survey. Doesn't seem to me like the community really cares at all about the issues being addressed here, and maybe the reason behind that is that Diglett and Trapinch are both terrible Pokémon that struggle to be successful even at "cheesing". I'd rather see Liepard being suspected to be honest.

Since suspecting permanent weather / Latios / Keldeo - which is the only way to properly balance this tier after 7 or 8 years of fucking around - is clearly not going to happen anymore, I believe the best thing we can do to make BW remotely entertaining again is unbanning Chlorophyll. After the Dugtrio ban BW returned to its previous state of Excadrill Rain / Bulky Sand which is honestly extremely boring and unbalanced. I think the metagame is in a very unhealthy state right now as Rain is the only weather that still has any way of being abused and unbanning Chlorophyll would bring a positive alternative to the status quo, as it would potentially make Sun viable again. It's quite clear to me that the broken aspect of Chlorophyll was affiliated with Dugtrio's ability to remove other inducers from the equation, hence why it was banned a couple years later despite Chlorophyll being gone.

Hopefully we can start a discussion on this topic and move on from this Arena Trap nonsense that has been a waste of time for the past 8 months.

I'd also like to question why these discussions are held in Policy Review instead of Ruins of Alph. I won't get into the criteria behind choosing voters (which sucks imo), but I don't see how limiting the amount of users who can contribute to our policy discussions could be positive, especially when talking about Old Gens because they are so dead it's very rare to see people actually engage in these threads now.

EDIT: for clarification, when I refer to the community in my first paragraph I'm referring to the overall Smogon community, not the 15 people surveyed.

 

[power]

tagging all voters:
undisputed, Ojama, TDK, Triangles, ABR, MetalGro$$, Kebab mlml, Luigi, Blackoblivion, FLCL, Malekith, Empo, Energy, odeio stall, Googly, Eo Ut Mortus, Lycans, Sam I Am, Jimmy Turtwig, M Dragon, Googly, blunder, obii, Tricking, Bomber., soTsoT, reyscarface, lax, bro fist, Posho, lax, Finchinator, Asuya, Ace-11, dice, Sand Castle, SoulWind, McMeghan, BKC, ZoroDark, Smurf., Shoka, elodin, Souf, LuckOverSkill

Use this thread to discuss how you think a vote involving Diglett and Excadrill should be handled by the BW OU council moving forward.

At least eight people on this list are unbadged; what's the point of opening a discussion if the
voters themself can't participate? How do we know the issue has been fleshed out when participants themselves can't even post in the thread?

 

[BKC]

appreciate all the dumbass clowning done at the 11th hour as usual

Finchinator will dugtrio be unbanned if arena is banned?

yes

Can anyone present a strong argument for banning Diglett / Trapinch other than cheese? I don’t have a strong lean to either side.

"Cheese" isn't reason to ban something or we'd ban Volcarona (my view on it). It's an extension of the principles behind the Dugtrio ban.

Can we expect something to be done about the current BW council? I believe the councils were formed to avoid poor tiering decisions, but this case has been handled extremely terribly. I really, really like this tier, but I am extremely scared about what will happen to it in the future, and I do not trust the current council to make the correct decisions, as they have given me no reason to based on their actions in the past.

I'm saddened that we don't live up to your standards, but "something to be done" like... what? If you give some substance we can maybe build upon it to improve, but right now this is literally "you suck, change" without any direction so not sure quite what you're expecting to happen.

The councils were formed so that when there was a (potential) issue with past gen tiers, time didn't have to be wasted running around trying to figure out who would be in charge of such a decision, and the accompanying mess that would go along with it. My source is that I was the person who proposed them for this reason after observing the mess that occurred every time something popped up. Is it ideal? God, no. Not that tiering ever is, but yeah, it's not perfect. It is, however, preferable to the alternative that we had in the past. We of course would love it if someone had a better solution ("stop changing old gens" is not one in case any genius had that great idea). Also, while the journey to get there was not how I'd have preferred it to go, the end result is what needed to happen for the metagame's sake. Before you think this is me jumping through hoops getting rid of everything that annoys me, I would unironically prefer to ban Keldeo than either of the hot button topics that have been giving us grief for a while now.

If it puts your mind at ease, the only issues the BW council has in mind are the ones that have been plaguing this tier and many have been lobbying to fix for a long time now, so you don't have to worry about us impulsively banning Keldeo or Garchomp or something stupid. The only thing going forward might be, should Arena Trap be banned, re-looking into freeing Chlorophyll with Drought, but that'd be open to discussion first, so you could voice your opinion then. Or you could wait until the last possible minute to complain in the most condescending, least constructive way possible.

I did a stupid shitpost about this that got me infracted but genuine question: why does it seem like every bw tiering decision these days is about trying to get rid of anything that threatens sand balance?

As much as it personally inconveniences me to repeat arguments that fall on purposely deaf ears, I'll do it again because I care about this tier I've been playing for 8 years: "lol you just want free wins with sand balance" is the laziest copout ever. Keldeo/Garchomp/Alakazam/hell, Jirachi sometimes/lol Hydreigon jesus christ/fucking Gliscor/Mew/sometimes Reuniclus/Magnezone/even Heatran on a bad day are all things that get in the way of easy wins with sand balance. I assure you that the great thing about sand is that it lets you outplay most matchups if built well, if you have a free win with such a team it means your opponent's is shit. Sun forces you into a corner and punishes you in non-outplayable ways for using the limited methods of countering incredibly tough Pokemon. This stretching thin of resources that sun does is what results in real cases of the popular cry of matchup. Tyranitar keeps teams from being utterly crushed by the incredibly dangerous high-profile threats of the metagame, and this ties into something I just don't understand about a lot of modern players' mentalities - a mocking or disregard of people who use the best Pokemon that can handle the metagame. I went over all this and more in the Excadrill thread (the other Pokemon that does similar things) if you want to read this argument outlined in better detail.

Also, sun doesn't only fuck up sand balance. As has been shown many times, it fucks up rain pretty hard as well. Forget about killing an uncontested Cresselia in sun, to say nothing of its teammates, so you're going to be using weather, either abusing rain or defending against it with sand, because a weatherless team against Cress sun is just a gigantic mismatch. This was already done because of Dugtrio so I don't get what the big deal is, this is just righting the wrong from before. Obviously the non-Dug Arena Trappers aren't as good as Dug but I would argue that that's missing the point.

TL;DR it only seems that way if you don't think about it too hard

Isn't it kind of pathetic that there is a suspect being held about this? This thread was posted 1 week ago and there were 2 replies, one of them a meme post and the other one a response from a council member himself (correct me if I'm wrong), whose opinion was already expressed on the survey. Doesn't seem to me like the community really cares at all about the issues being addressed here, and maybe the reason behind that is that Diglett and Trapinch are both terrible Pokémon that struggle to be successful even at "cheesing".

I partially agree, although "pathetic" is a pretty strong word to throw around. I just wanted to ban them like we should've to begin with. However, it was either this or hand the sentence down from on high, and I'm guessing if we did that it wouldn't take long before the kicking and screaming about lack of community input began. With this, you had a chance to speak, and if you choose to say nothing until the last minute, then I'm sorry but we gave you more than enough time if you cared. Plus, the majority of the exit poll, which you can see for yourself, indicated a desire to have something done about this, including the response from a user who's now making a big show about voting no ban in order to be funny or something.

I'd rather see Liepard being suspected to be honest.

Liepard's pretty stupid, but a lot of teams naturally handle it somewhat decently (Protect, Magic Guard, hazard resistance, Lefties). If it becomes a problem, then I have no opposition to this, but currently haven't seen too much that suggests it is one. If you really care then there are a few things you can do about it.

Since suspecting permanent weather / Latios / Keldeo - which is the only way to properly balance this tier after 7 or 8 years of fucking around - is clearly not going to happen anymore,

Perma weather was considered too late when several people including myself argued for it five and a half years ago, when BW was still the current generation. Don't think we can overturn that now and instead should just work to make the best version of what we have (and for a while we had something really great before the things we've been struggling with for coming up on two years started haranguing us). I too think Keldeo should've been banned way back when but we're in the minority on this. Same deal with Latios.

I believe the best thing we can do to make BW remotely entertaining again is unbanning Chlorophyll. After the Dugtrio ban BW returned to its previous state of Excadrill Rain / Bulky Sand which is honestly extremely boring and unbalanced.

"Boring" doesn't mean anything. Metagames always have the same best Pokemon used the most. Trying to fix this with bans lasts for a short amount of time before the meta's figured out and the problem pops up again. I also don't see how it's unbalanced - because certain things are stronger than others? That's just the way of the land, how metagames tend to work.

I think the metagame is in a very unhealthy state right now as Rain is the only weather that still has any way of being abused

I don't see how this is a competitively minded argument. This is on par with "xyz would be more fun." Plus, I don't even think it's very true. Sand is really abusable, from the chip on everything - Protect Gliscor, Heatran and Ferrothorn are not nearly as good without it - to the SpD boost letting Terrakion be an ironclad Volcarona answer and letting Tyranitar check a ton of bullshit.

unbanning Chlorophyll would bring a positive alternative to the status quo, as it would potentially make Sun viable again. It's quite clear to me that the broken aspect of Chlorophyll was affiliated with Dugtrio's ability to remove other inducers from the equation, hence why it was banned a couple years later despite Chlorophyll being gone.

Hopefully we can start a discussion on this topic and move on from this Arena Trap nonsense that has been a waste of time for the past 8 months.

Yeah, as I said earlier in this post, we would definitely be looking into this.

I'd also like to question why these discussions are held in Policy Review instead of Ruins of Alph. I won't get into the criteria behind choosing voters (which sucks imo), but I don't see how limiting the amount of users who can positively contribute to our policy discussions, especially when talking about Old Gens because they are so dead it's very rare to see people actually engaged in these threads now.

People commonly have proxy posts for them, but yeah, this is a good idea to consider. We'll look into it for Excadrill. As for the voter choosing... if you have an alternative, we're all ears, I'm not a huge fan either.

Condescension aside, I sincerely thank you for making constructive suggestions. after all, we should all be on the same side here, the betterment of the metagame.

 

[Finchinator]

At least eight people on this list are unbadged; what's the point of opening a discussion if the
voters themself can't participate? How do we know the issue has been fleshed out when participants themselves can't even post in the thread?

We literally had them all (besides a few SPL qualifiers as we wanted to cover more recent metagame developments) participate in a survey that is linked in the second post of this thread and that survey had questions that covered both prospective suspects. Did you completely forget this existed or are you just trying to nitpick? Either way, this is clearly a non-issue in my eyes.

e: yea, we upped the cutoff % to 60% -- it's in the op now

 

[elodin]

Claiming that I don't care every 2 lines doesn't make your points any less stupid. Why don't you try to read the OP? It's clearly stated there that the thread was opened for discussion on what the line-of-action should be and that Diglett and Trapinch were being suspected, this was never a place to discuss whether something was banworthy or not. The idea that you're trying to make that this thread was any more than a confirmation post is such a joke that I was debating if you were worth responding to. The fact that this council keeps making decisions without promoting discussions outside of their exit pools is exactly what I complained about 7 months ago during the Dugtrio suspect, and the fact you're doing it again (while also making the same mistake of not mentioning the ban % like you did the last time) just seems to me like you're the one who doesn't really care to what I have to say, not the other way around.

Onto what you said about the metagame,

If you wanna compare Sand's chip damage through Protect (?) and Terrakion's / Tyranitar's SDef boost to Rain-boosted Water STABs (Scarf / Specs Keld, Starmie, Gyarados), Rain Dish from Tentacruel, Dry Skin from Toxicroak, Thunder and Hurricane increased accuracy (which makes Thundurus-T and Tornadus pretty much exclusive to Rain teams), the boost to coverage moves and the damage reduction of Fire-type moves... go right ahead? The one example you didn't bring up was Sand Force Scarf Excadrill, which is the only thing that I can think of that abuses Sand the same way Rain is abused at the moment and it still doesn't come close to the amount of options Rain brings to the table.

Why is this a problem? Because at the moment and throughout this tier's history we've seen plenty of suspects being held and plenty of suspects being disregarded to maintain this idea that BW is the "permanent weather" tier, the "weather war" tier. Right now, BW is a tier in which 2 weathers are good and most of the time winning the weather war doesn't even matter. You'll see people do their best to not send in their Tyranitar if they're facing Sand Rush Excadrill. This also adds up when you think about how repetitive the metagame is due to the fact that you need to stick to certain archetypes to not instantly lose to the amount of ridiculously strong threats in the tier (Latios being the biggest issue here). So this isn't just "metagames always having the same best Pokemon used the most" like you described, it's an entire tier that can be summed into two archetypes that offer very little room for innovation, outplaying or skillful play.

That being said, I believe the tier has a lot to gain from unbanning Chlorophyll, hopefully increasing diversity and bringing back its identity.

 

[Laurel]

What happens after this vote? Does banning Diglett really fix anything?

 

[Wizard]

Hi, I wrote this post seven days ago so sorry if it seems "off". Also, I've seen dom's first post and I have to say, even if it was pretty much an one-liner, deleting it was a mistake IMO because it was the right provocation to start discussion on these matters, which hasn't happened until the council authoritatively decided to proceed with the vote anyway.

Arena Trap
Tbh Dugtrio should have never been banned to begin with, in eight years worth of metagame development it only sparked discussion when combined with Genesect or Tornadus-T, and even then it was made clear that the broken ones were these two and not Dugtrio. I suspect the BW Council looked at gen6 and gen7 and took Dugtrio out of the context of Gen 5 OU, explaining why they didn't even consider looking into Cresselia or Xatu, two mons still abused by Sun builds. For example people like Bluri are having success on the ladder by running a Ninetales / Quagsire / Heatran / Cresselia / Forretress / Chansey team which, surprisingly, does not run any Arena trapper. It shows that Sun's strength does not come necessarily from "broken" Arena Trap but rather from good synergy (and it also shows how even an Arena Trap ban will not kill Sun).
On the flipside, it's true that Googly managed to get to the bw cup finals with Ninetales / Cresselia / Gothitelle / Diglett / Xatu / Chansey. Indeed, that kind of team hasn't been severely affected by Dugtrio's ban, in fact I'd say the BW Council only managed to get rid of Dugtrio Sun Offense (the most matchup-dependant sub-archetype), Tokyo Tom's Sun (far from being broken in my opinion), and Arena trap + Rain. The point is: Diglett Sun Stall is the only archetype abusing Arena trap left, and there aren't many ways to diversify it without making it worse. Even accounting for Googly's success, it hasn't even come near to the level of effectiveness and usage Dugtrio Sun Stall had. We are acting before the problem even occurs, hysterically witch-hunting Diglett and Trapinch. Let's just try to prepare for Sun stall, for now: different kinds of Dugtrio Sun teams required different counterplay, but how about now that we have only one left?

In 2013 things like Rain Dance Keldeo and CB dragons utterly destroyed Sun (with Chlorophyll and Dugtrio allowed!) and we thought it was more than enough. In 2018 we have even more things to hurt it (Taunt Hydreigon, SD SDef Gliscor, ProTox Excadrill, Sub Heatran etc) yet here we are discussing a Diglett & Trapinch suspect. We should acknowledge Sun as a legitimate archetype rather than calling it "cheese" and trying to turn back the clock to the rotten metagame that was 2015 BW 1 2 3 I mean this
Sun also gave us a great amount of metagame development and we should recognise this fact. When Dugtrio was allowed Latios was not nearly as obnoxionous as it is now (please compare its SPL winrate with WCOP), and the same can be said for Sand Rush Excadrill and Rain Offense in general. BW should have never been reduced to Rain vs Sand to begin with, and banning Dugtrio only set in stone this polarisation; we should encourage any attempt to bring back Sun, not prevent it. I can see why tournament players would want to remove Diglett / Arena Trap (it's pretty much a trump card usable by anyone that throws any preparation out of the window and forces fair play), but really if your opponent wants to surprise you, they will find a way to do so anyway. So, please vote consciously.

Excadrill
I'm happy to see how nobody advocates for a total Excadrill ban this time. If your team loses to Scarf Sand Force it's very likely to lose to Scarf Garchomp too, while bulky Mold Breaker is mostly an utility spinner (well there are other sets but the most common ones are these three). So, this time the picture is clearer. That said, yes after a year of building and battling I can say Sand Rush Excadrill is broken, mainly due to the 30% flinch chance added to an already flawless pokemon (when under sand). However, acting on Excadrill poses at least two problems:

-First of all, only 4-5 players in the exit polls declared to want a Sand Rush ban so I question the opportunity of the suspect. Was it an autonomous decision made by the Council? Or it has to do with the remaining five players all answering positively to the question "do you think Sand Rush is banworthy"?
-Secondly, guys you really need to estabilish some policy guidelines. Excadrill has already been suspected ten months ago and escaped the banhammer when Rain Offense was arguably stronger than it is now, while the Pokemon itself pretty much stayed the same. You can't just overthrow November 2017's vote and call another suspect whenever you want. This is something you should be able to do only in extraordinary circumstances such as the discovery of a new set (which hasn't happened) or an extreme change in the tier's power levels (which has happened with Sun but after Dugtrio's ban the tier mostly went back to Sand vs Rain again). Whatever the decision will be, please put some constraints to your powers as soon as possible.
-Last but not least, with both Sun and Sand Rush out of the equation Sand will gain way TOO much flexibility; once we entered a Sand-dominated metagame there will be no way out of it, so please remember this. Excadrill has been a prime factor of metagame development just like Sun (think of Bronzong, physically defensive Skarmory, Bulky Scarf Superpower Landorus etc), maybe there's something else underway.

tl; dr
1. Sun is niche (again), so there's no point in banning diglett. If Sun becomes unbearable, maybe we can unban Dugtrio and look into Xatu / Magic Bounce / Cresselia / whatever instead. I doubt Arena trap is broken
2. I find a Sand Rush Excadrill ban acceptable but I disagree with how the council tackles problems. Also it wouldn't have been necessary in a Sand/Rain/Sun metagame.

P.S. Chlorophyll only deceives discussion and we shouldn't talk about that, it will never happen because Venusaur is one hundred times stronger than the five moles combined and current BW players would just bitch about it
P.P.S. As someone already said, it's really really sad to see how BW discussion is completely ignored outside of Policy review, like hell the viability rankings thread hasn't been updated since April lol. [/SPOILER]

Post that I deleted, it comes after post #32

This was dom's first post. If you are trying to seriously tell me that this post should not be deleted, then I am sorry, but I strongly disagree with you. [...]

Proxy-posting and meddling with old generation tiering are banned too, yet no one enforces these rules. I'll admit arguing on this will not bring us anywhere, though.

In addition, we kept the thread open for over a week. I am not sure what else you want out of us considering the tight schedule of the circuit [...]

You see this brings out another problem which is the fact you would put the interests of the tournament circuit over the well-being of the tier. This summer has seen almost 0 BW discussion, then Smogon Tour approaches and everyone loses their minds for a fucking Diglett. The deadline for the vote is literally the day before the first BW week starts...

I disagree with your claiming that Sun is currently niche, I do not doubt that Arena Trap is broken, and I think that the fact that a strong majority of the opinions we polled also felt that Arena Trap was problematic justifies our test sufficiently, especially seeing as there were no justified rebuttals or arguments posted in the week we had this thread open prior.

On what grounds Arena Trap is broken? Finchinator let's be honest here how many times did you face Diglett Sun during this summer? We are not contesting this vote just for the sake of doing so but we're doing it because it seems based on assumptions and theorymonning, and motivated only by the irrational fear that Diglett may randomly rise and ruin the Smogon tour. Heck we didn't even really talk about Diglett. Every response in favour of a Diglett ban in the exit polls was extremely summary--basically only Tyranitar, Heatran and Terrakion have been explicitly mentioned as potential Diglett targets. So far NO ONE wrote an extensive post about what Diglett can do and what Diglett cannot do, nor someone actually talked about the current state of Sun stall. Saying Diglett capabilities are 'more limited' than Dugtrio is not enough. With Dugtrio you could just let Xatu die against SR Chomp and then remove it before it could get to do something - now you either take rocks or expose Gothitelle to Pursuit to do the same job, which isn't particularly ideal considering how there may be Hydreigon / Reuniclus / Mew / another threat ready to ruin Sun (also Gothitelle is setup field, Rock Tomb/Toxic Dugtrio is not). Diglett makes Sun teams way more vulnerable to both Kyurem forms than they were, Diglett isn't as good as Dugtrio at removing Tentacruel and weakened Politoed, Diglett requires you to double switch or sac something to trap Terrakion and ScarfTar (someone mentioned it). Diglett is ass at SubToxicing things like Chansey because it only takes one Seismic Toss, it only has a 68.8% chance to kill offensive Toxicroak (to give an idea of how much is weak), it has to activate Focus Sash to trap Scarf Victini at -1 and to poison Keldeo, and most of the times it can't really get SR up (#1 reason Leftiez Sun is dead).

Not to mention how, even assuming Diglett is actually broken and deserves to get banned, we aren't even discussing the possibility of leaving Trapinch around. Dugtrio is controversial, Diglett is niche, but Trapinch is hot trash. Why are we banning it anyway? Where does this "arena trap is broken" mantra come from? This isn't Sun and Moon. We have not 3000 Defog users to keep the Sash intact nor Mega Sableye, and this metagame is centered around bulky offense not balance. Never compare apples with oranges, or you will end up banning Arena Trap in DPP and RSE too.

banning arena trap (and stag) have little collateral,

No, with Dugtrio Sun around Latios had a shitty 36% winrate and Excadrill had 38%, while with Dugtrio's ban they have become borderline broken again (the same can be said about Spikes because Xatu). Banning Arena Trap (i.e. adding Diglett and Trapinch to the ban) before it even gets a chance to shine means to further boost their dominance so it's not a little collateral. Also """updating the dugtrio ban definition""" in this case leads to extreme incoherence: you are banning Diglett and Trapinch while ignoring Magneton, Magnezone, Gothitelle, Wobbuffet, Tyranitar, Scizor and Weavile trapping capabilities. May as well use the dick to make tiering decisions

 

[watashi]

i enjoy bw (unironically)

 

[Finchinator]

Claiming that I don't care every 2 lines doesn't make your points any less stupid. Why don't you try to read the OP? It's clearly stated there that the thread was opened for discussion on what the line-of-action should be and that Diglett and Trapinch were being suspected, this was never a place to discuss whether something was banworthy or not. The idea that you're trying to make that this thread was any more than a confirmation post is such a joke that I was debating if you were worth responding to. The fact that this council keeps making decisions without promoting discussions outside of their exit pools is exactly what I complained about 7 months ago during the Dugtrio suspect, and the fact you're doing it again (while also making the same mistake of not mentioning the ban % like you did the last time) just seems to me like you're the one who doesn't really care to what I have to say, not the other way around.

While I do not see eye-to-eye with you and happen to agree with BKC on just about every front, I do want to say that nobody on the council truly believes that you do not care and we are glad to hear any constructive input; that is the point of threads like these (although ideally people would post promptly and not after we have taken action). This thread was our attempt to "promote discussion" outside of our exit "pools" as you would like to say. I am sorry if this did not meet your standards for doing so and I would gladly listen to any civilized constructive criticism on the old gen tiering process, specifically with regards to receiving feedback.

Why is this a problem? Because at the moment and throughout this tier's history we've seen plenty of suspects being held and plenty of suspects being disregarded to maintain this idea that BW is the "permanent weather" tier, the "weather war" tier. Right now, BW is a tier in which 2 weathers are good and most of the time winning the weather war doesn't even matter. You'll see people do their best to not send in their Tyranitar if they're facing Sand Rush Excadrill. This also adds up when you think about how repetitive the metagame is due to the fact that you need to stick to certain archetypes to not instantly lose to the amount of ridiculously strong threats in the tier (Latios being the biggest issue here). So this isn't just "metagames always having the same best Pokemon used the most" like you described, it's an entire tier that can be summed into two archetypes that offer very little room for innovation, outplaying or skillful play.

That being said, I believe the tier has a lot to gain from unbanning Chlorophyll, hopefully increasing diversity and bringing back its identity.

You are entitled to feel however you would like about the metagame and I am not one to tell you that you are wrong and the opinion of myself or another council member is right. Quite on the contrary -- I am open to hearing opinions from the playerbase and we are using the majority opinion to guide us in moving forward (the exit poles being a great example of this, but this thread would, too, if people posted more off-the-bat). With this said, I strongly disagree with the sentiments expressed within the portion of your post that I bolded. Personally (and again, this is just the opinion of Finchinator, not that of the entire BW Council and not one that should be seen as the 100% undisputed "right" opinion), I find that the metagame may be limited in terms of consistent archetypes, but these archetypes both are wide-open in terms of things you can make use of and they also have some room for innovation (clearly not as much as a modern generation like SM OU, but certainly not none whatsoever). In addition, the fact that you feel there is not much room for skillful play is something I also disagree with a lot. I think that this is definitely not the case and the consistency of a number of top players in BW attests to this; the metagame is far from being a match-up fest and archetypes have enough room to work against each other while the metagame is "open" (aka not too restricted) enough to foster a competitive environment. I also believe that the changes that are being made and perhaps may be made moving forward are only increasing the competitive nature of the metagame. I understand that you and perhaps others feel differently, which is part of why we are trying to get more input from the community.

What happens after this vote? Does banning Diglett really fix anything?

After this vote, Arena Trap will be banned or it will remain in the metagame seeing as these are the two choices. It is likely that we will also act on the topic of Excadrill seeing as many people believed it was problematic when used in conjunction with Sand Rush, but that is not necessarily a discussion that should take place now. If you are asking about the practical implications of the Arena Trap (not Diglett) vote, then yes I feel it will "fix" matters. Diglett Sun teams have been used in a similar fashion to Dugtrio Sun teams, but simply with less room for changing matters up. Generally, Diglett is best when paired with other trappers, most notably on teams like Leftiez's. It is not able to trap things like Terrakion, for example, and it prefers having other things help it finish off specific threats, thus making the support appreciated. With this said, the general dynamic of Sun + trapping of the opposing weather set is still one that many deem unfit to remain in the current metagame due to the uncompetitive nature of trapping itself.

Hi, I wrote this post seven days ago so sorry if it seems "off". Also, I've seen dom's first post and I have to say, even if it was pretty much an one-liner, deleting it was a mistake IMO because it was the right provocation to start discussion on these matters, which hasn't happened until the council authoritatively decided to proceed with the vote anyway.

This was dom's first post. If you are trying to seriously tell me that this post should not be deleted, then I am sorry, but I strongly disagree with you. This post was not only sarcastic, but also simply unrealistic and clearly delete/infract worthy under any moderation guidelines you can find on these forums. There is a much different and more civilized fashion of expressing the same sentiment that could foster healthy discussion.

In addition, we kept the thread open for over a week. I am not sure what else you want out of us considering the tight schedule of the circuit and the fact that we already reached out to tournament players and they strongly requested Arena Trap being acted on. I feel like we may have mistimed previous suspects or even outright rushed them for sure. I take full responsibility for those actions and chalk some of them up to my personal incompetence. However, I feel that this time around we handled the timing just fine.

tl; dr
1. Sun is niche (again), so there's no point in banning diglett. If Sun becomes unbearable, maybe we can unban Dugtrio and look into Xatu / Magic Bounce / Cresselia / whatever instead. I doubt Arena trap is broken

I disagree with your claiming that Sun is currently niche, I do not doubt that Arena Trap is broken, and I think that the fact that a strong majority of the opinions we polled also felt that Arena Trap was problematic justifies our test sufficiently, especially seeing as there were no justified rebuttals or arguments posted in the week we had this thread open prior.

2. I find a Sand Rush Excadrill ban acceptable but I disagree with how the council tackles problems. Also it wouldn't have been necessary in a Sand/Rain/Sun metagame.

We are not quite there yet (not voting yet and certainly not banning yet, so I am glad that you are expressing this opinion. I have read your points on this matter and we will take anything mentioned in this thread into consideration when we discuss matters moving forward. Thanks for leaving your input!

P.P.S. As someone already said, it's really really sad to see how BW discussion is completely ignored outside of Policy review, like hell the viability rankings thread hasn't been updated since April lol.

I could not agree more with this! I hope to see more lively discussions moving forward and I hope to actively participate in them myself. I'm always down to play and discuss BW!

I would also like to note that I have had a couple users reach out to me in PM and if you feel most comfortable doing that, then do not hesitate to do this. I plan to relay relevant parts of these conversations to the BW Council when appropriate. In addition, remember to vote to everyone who has yet to submit their vote to me in PM -- thank you (ps: the ban threshold is 60% this time, just as a note).

 

[Laurel]

I still don't understand why we're suspect testing Diglett and not the best trapper in the metagame, Magnezone. I hate this outlook of "we'll test this if/when it becomes a problem" one problem I have with the council is you only ban what is in front of you. Can we actually consider the long term effects for a change? The only thing banning Diglett does is make sun even less viable, we should have never even banned Dugtrio.

We should evaluat Sand Rush Excadrill first, something that is actually spammed and broken, instead we look at [BAN ME PLEASE] Diglett... Get rid of Sand Rush Excadrill, bring back Venusaur, and lets have a real conversation about getting rid of Keldeo.

I'm honestly leaning abstain because the fact we are even voting on Diglett makes me angry, I'm yet to be convinced this thing is close to a problem.

 

[Finchinator]

I still don't understand why we're suspect testing Diglett and not the best trapper in the metagame, Magnezone.

The things Magnezone traps are counters to things that are still beatable via regular/not incredibly restrictive means that are not unlikely to be on a team in the current metagame. Diglett is quite different and what it traps can pretty much determine games.

I hate this outlook of "we'll test this if/when it becomes a problem" one problem I have with the council is you only ban what is in front of you.

As opposed to doing what exactly? Are you implying that we should try to look months (maybe years given that older generations move at slower paces) ahead and ban things that are currently not problematic? Or are you implying that we should just never deal with things that are problematic despite them being problematic? Either way, what? This is what every tiering council does and will continue to do moving forward.

Can we actually consider the long term effects for a change? The only thing banning Diglett does is make sun even less viable, we should have never even banned Dugtrio.

Making things less viable is never a concern. We did not care that the Rain archetype took a hit when we banned Tornadus-Therian back during early BW2, for example. Diglett is largely the same as Dugtrio in terms of impact it can have, so yea it is indeed a problem. Caring about viability like this is on par with tiering for fun. If we did whatever we could to preserve different archetypes, we might as well never ban anything. Oh and also, long term effects are never predictable, which has been shown by quite literally every suspect over the past 5 years of BW.

We should evaluat Sand Rush Excadrill first, something that is actually spammed and broken, instead we look at [BAN ME PLEASE] Diglett... Get rid of Sand Rush Excadrill, bring back Venusaur, and lets have a real conversation about getting rid of Keldeo.

Well, we are going to evaluate Sand Rush Excadrill, as we alluded to multiple times within this thread, rest assured. As for Venusaur, maybe bringing it back would be ok in the future, but certainly not with Arena Trap...keep in mind that it pretty much outruns everything in Sun and has boosted Growth combined with Sleep Powder, so it is not really simple. As for Keldeo, sure, but if you actually give a shit, then raise the question yourself! The reason we (the BW Council) exist is so things like this can happen. Don't get pissy at the last second of a different suspect because that's definitely not how it happens.

I'm honestly leaning abstain because the fact we are even voting on Diglett makes me angry, I'm yet to be convinced this thing is close to a problem.

You have the right to vote however you want, but god damn this 11th hour crying is stupid.

 

[Laurel]

I'm not going to respond to your entire post but the fact that you are comparing Diglett to TORNADUS-THERIAN, LOL. Yeah Tornadus-T was spammed and broken, have fun switching into 100% accurate Hurricanes in permanent weather, Diglett is a niche mon that sees little to no usage.

"This 11th hour crying is stupid" More like, this 11th hour random vote of Diglett is stupid. The only person who even posted in the thread was Dice who from what I understand, is on this council.

How about this 11th hour subjective voting requirements? If you're going to host a vote like such you should announce the requirements ahead of time so other people can look to meet them.

Why are you blowing up Venusaur like it is some huge problem? Because it destroys this ideal metagame of Rain Balance v. Sand Balance?

In SPL 5, Venusaur was used 6 times with a win rate of 33%.
In SPL 6, Venusaur was used 3 times with a win rate of 33%.
In Smogon Tour 25, Diglett was used 10 times, yes 10 times the entire tournament, with a win rate of 50%.

In Smogon Tour 25, Magnezone on the other hand was used 96 times, on over 12% of teams, with a win rate of 54.17%.

I'm not telling you to ban Magnezone, I'm telling you that Diglett isn't a problem, nobody uses it, and most people couldn't care what happened to it. Also, please tell me how trap killing Ferrothorn which has been a top 5 mon in BW OU since its inception does not completely change the game.

 

[Finchinator]

I'm not going to respond to your entire post but the fact that you are comparing Diglett to TORNADUS-THERIAN, LOL. Yeah Tornadus-T was spammed and broken, have fun switching into 100% accurate Hurricanes in permanent weather, Diglett is a niche mon that sees little to no usage.

I did not compare the two in my post. I said that Tornadus-Therian being important to the Rain archetype did not hold us back from banning it. Unless you are implying Diglett is even more important to Sun than Tornadus-Therian was to Rain, then there is literally no comparison made at all in my logic. Did you just ignore the contents of my post, find Tornadus-Therian namedropped, and try to make a diversion instead of actually understanding the situation?

"This 11th hour crying is stupid" More like, this 11th hour random vote of Diglett is stupid. The only person who even posted in the thread was Dice who from what I understand, is on this council.

I'm going to assume you understand the phrase "the 11th hour" given your attempt to counter my assertion, but like...what? This is not a "random" vote and it was not done in the 11th hour. It was planned thoroughly, the tournament playerbase was given an opinion poll, the (badged) community was given a thread to discuss it for over a week here (nobody opposed it + the exit poll showed strong support), and then we finally made a vote after all of those measures. You guys even knew a vote of some sort was going to happen given the OP and yet you're responding only after the vote is made, which is quite literally the epitome of this 11th hour petty bullshit you're trying to pull out of your ass.

How about this 11th hour subjective voting requirements? If you're going to host a vote like such you should announce the requirements ahead of time so other people can look to meet them.

The voting requirements have been similar for every single old generation vote dating back to the start of Old Generation Councils. The fact that you are just bringing this up now instead of at any point between suspects or at the start just attests to my claim that you're the one pulling the "11th hour shit". Again, I am ALWAYS open to hearing ideas as to how to improve our process. My PMs are open. Threads like this are open and others can be made. However, the one time to not suddenly cry "WAIT I disagree" is not after action is already taken when so many precuationary measures were opened to you beforehand.

Why are you blowing up Venusaur like it is some huge problem? Because it destroys this ideal metagame of Rain Balance v. Sand Balance?

In SPL 5, Venusaur was used 6 times with a win rate of 33%.
In SPL 6, Venusaur was used 3 times with a win rate of 33%.
In Smogon Tour 25, Diglett was used 10 times, yes 10 times the entire tournament, with a win rate of 50%.

SPL 5 and SPL 6 happened 4-5 years ago. Both of those statistics are irrelevant and if you even try to spin it otherwise then any credibility your argument has is completely lost. STour 25 had Dugtrio banned in the middle of it and the stats never got fully finished, so that stat is irrelevant and you're basically using it to paint a highly misleading point if you knew this at all. The fact that you cited these three statistics is more laughable than it is informative or helpful to your point. Please refrain from posting if you are not going to be informed beforehand. This is how threads get derailed.

 

[Bughouse]

The things Magnezone traps are counters to things that are still beatable via regular/not incredibly restrictive means that are not unlikely to be on a team in the current metagame. Diglett is quite different and what it traps can pretty much determine games.

If something as absolutely pathetic as Diglett can determine games this way, let me posit that the problem is the precarious state of the metagame, not Diglett. Teams should be able to handle losing one Pokemon and not immediately auto-lose.