There's some interesting ideas in the previous posts, so as the CEO of Barra SS, I'll make some comments with PLIX almost done. I'll be collective and not too specific because putting a huge magnifying glass over this gen is just a seemingly sophisticated way to lead to analysis paralysis.
I can see this being a top5 more or less. Order hardly matters in my VRs because in the grand scheme of things, intramon and intraset interactions are more important than declaring a mon as the sole S rank, few S- ranks, etc. The water pixies embody several of the things I like in this gen. Strong typing, freedom to run whatever item and most importantly a smooth matchup tradeoff between different sets. AKA, I'm confident they were still the most reliable mons of PLIX, similar to what I thought post PL7. I will continue having a soft spot for Prim, but truth be told, Fini was the most oppressive pixie this year.
I find it interesting that while is still the most "bannable" mon of SS post PLIX, it pales in comparison to what we had in the past, e.g. 
showing that the decentralisation of SS post 
ban has done wonders. At the end of the day, it's the players' responsibility to find checks to a few annoying sets and Cress is just that: a good mon with a vast opportunity cost that gets somewhat annoying to deal with once you move away from it's traditional counters and that can easily be more punishing to its user than the opp if you try to get too techy.
deserves a top 5 status partly because it's a trusty 2-1 generating machine like it's always been, and partly because Zen got promising results. The theoretical versatility was always there, but now we saw on several occasions that players who didn't compress the various darm sets' matchups on their teams got punished and I can imagine this becoming a trend going forward.
I expected more representation, that mon is broken.
Despite being some sort of top5, these mons all have a few trap elements to them. Reflect prim is loadable but bad, helmet Cress is loadable but very bad, band meta is loadable but very very bad. Scarf darm isn't all that.
deserves to be highly respected but PLIX SS hated steela, although the newfound love for darm may push occa and custap variants?
I'm not sure how
is still ranked so highly by others? If a good glue with some degree of versatility is top5 status, then idk, 
is too. I think mons like these are very good, but their splashability leads to overrating their worth.
There's a long list of super-usable mons so just look at the luser list. From Barras POV we had a lot of fun with
s/o the Mishlef and Blanched gang , 
s/o fratello Close , 
s/o my trusty Rei
and many others s/o CEO. BTW the duck isn't dropping off, just a bit scary to use, although notably scarier for the opponent. Anyway, we've been saying this for 3 years now. 
I didn't get to use this against skill swap Cress or Registeel this year, but at least I provided Glitched with a replay for the analysis.
In general, post PLIX SS feels almost the same as post PL7 to me, yet there are still fresh ideas to try and just some more care to be taken to not lose to top mons' obscure sets. Very good spot to be in.
Once gen10 rolls and SS gets a single slot, keep SS7, it's the logical conclusion based on community support. We lobbied for the same thing when SV launched and "should" have had double bo5.
Regarding general remarks brought by zo and luser:
We shouldn't be entertaining thoughts of banning
. The tier has its unique flair and at the core of it, it's all about going one step ahead in your thought process and understanding what the process behind my opponent's building was, and why could it be that X mon benefits from custap, Y mon benefits from resist berry, Z mon benefits from weakpol, etc. Does it make sense for X to come out if its not custap? Fun part is, you dont even have to hard setguess. Understanding the general role of the mons is enough to estimate what youre facing.
Nerfing the most competitive gen 1v1 has to offer because people don't like being burnt when they play with risks doesn't make sense to me. Start with custap and you won't stop until we play a proper RPS game where electric unmistakably beats water and heatran is usually not bulky enough to survive a Dragapult Hydro pump. But seeing how we don't allow Heatran to use AV, then should we look into Specs too? Let's not take creativity away from this gen.
There was a sleep vote 2 years ago. Despite not liking the result (I participated and voted ban), nothing has changed on the sleep front with the exception of a handful who now lose to it more than they used to win with it, because that's just how sleep turns work, you can't be consistently lucky. No reason to revisit.
High entry barrier for the gen. The resources are good and well maintained but without a ladder, it's borderline impossible to attract people who will want to stay and learn more after playing a few OGPL or PL games, SS seems hard to learn without the ability to spam games. I would like to see a ladder (tour) implementation. The worst that can happen is that it doesn't work out, thats at least net neutral, quite possibly net positive. Maybe that will boost
usage?
I can see this being a top5 more or less. Order hardly matters in my VRs because in the grand scheme of things, intramon and intraset interactions are more important than declaring a mon as the sole S rank, few S- ranks, etc. The water pixies
embody several of the things I like in this gen. Strong typing, freedom to run whatever item and most importantly a smooth matchup tradeoff between different sets. AKA, I'm confident they were still the most reliable mons of PLIX, similar to what I thought post PL7. I will continue having a soft spot for Prim, but truth be told, Fini was the most oppressive pixie this year.I find it interesting that while
is still the most "bannable" mon of SS post PLIX, it pales in comparison to what we had in the past, e.g. showing that the decentralisation of SS post ban has done wonders. At the end of the day, it's the players' responsibility to find checks to a few annoying sets and Cress is just that: a good mon with a vast opportunity cost that gets somewhat annoying to deal with once you move away from it's traditional counters and that can easily be more punishing to its user than the opp if you try to get too techy. deserves a top 5 status partly because it's a trusty 2-1 generating machine like it's always been, and partly because Zen got promising results. The theoretical versatility was always there, but now we saw on several occasions that players who didn't compress the various darm sets' matchups on their teams got punished and I can imagine this becoming a trend going forward.I expected more
representation, that mon is broken.Despite being some sort of top5, these mons all have a few trap elements to them. Reflect prim is loadable but bad, helmet Cress is loadable but very bad, band meta is loadable but very very bad. Scarf darm isn't all that.
deserves to be highly respected but PLIX SS hated steela, although the newfound love for darm may push occa and custap variants?I'm not sure how
is still ranked so highly by others? If a good glue with some degree of versatility is top5 status, then idk, is too. I think mons like these are very good, but their splashability leads to overrating their worth.There's a long list of super-usable mons so just look at the luser list. From Barras POV we had a lot of fun with
s/o the Mishlef and Blanched gang , s/o fratello Close , s/o my trusty Rei and many others s/o CEO. BTW the duck isn't dropping off, just a bit scary to use, although notably scarier for the opponent. Anyway, we've been saying this for 3 years now. I didn't get to use this against skill swap Cress or Registeel this year, but at least I provided Glitched with a replay for the analysis.In general, post PLIX SS feels almost the same as post PL7 to me, yet there are still fresh ideas to try and just some more care to be taken to not lose to top mons' obscure sets. Very good spot to be in.
Once gen10 rolls and SS gets a single slot, keep SS7, it's the logical conclusion based on community support. We lobbied for the same thing when SV launched and "should" have had double bo5.
Regarding general remarks brought by zo and luser:
We shouldn't be entertaining thoughts of banning
. The tier has its unique flair and at the core of it, it's all about going one step ahead in your thought process and understanding what the process behind my opponent's building was, and why could it be that X mon benefits from custap, Y mon benefits from resist berry, Z mon benefits from weakpol, etc. Does it make sense for X to come out if its not custap? Fun part is, you dont even have to hard setguess. Understanding the general role of the mons is enough to estimate what youre facing.Nerfing the most competitive gen 1v1 has to offer because people don't like being burnt when they play with risks doesn't make sense to me. Start with custap and you won't stop until we play a proper RPS game where electric unmistakably beats water and heatran is usually not bulky enough to survive a Dragapult Hydro pump. But seeing how we don't allow Heatran to use AV, then should we look into Specs too? Let's not take creativity away from this gen.
There was a sleep vote 2 years ago. Despite not liking the result (I participated and voted ban), nothing has changed on the sleep front with the exception of a handful who now lose to it more than they used to win with it, because that's just how sleep turns work, you can't be consistently lucky. No reason to revisit.
High entry barrier for the gen. The resources are good and well maintained but without a ladder, it's borderline impossible to attract people who will want to stay and learn more after playing a few OGPL or PL games, SS seems hard to learn without the ability to spam games. I would like to see a ladder (tour) implementation. The worst that can happen is that it doesn't work out, thats at least net neutral, quite possibly net positive. Maybe that will boost
usage?
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