I gotta agree with ljsdnlsdln here, good points.
Echoing their points. At the end of the last time TM was omotm I felt like we were closing in on a stabilized meta where most of the outright, undeniably broken and competitive aspects were dealt with (para & annihilape for example). The first two weeks there were plenty of fires to put out and decision had to be made quickly and decisively, but imo that approach overstayed its welcome. The balacing act between creativity and bans isn't one dimensional. If you ban something centralizing that creates room for creativity, but bans can also be made too early - before an equilibrium can be found.
The second to last banlist was already right on that line imo, but disable and imprison really comes out of the blue. Neither of these felt like big problems when this was omotm. Sure, disable does screw you if you're choice'd, but that's kind of the point yeah? Outside of that scenario, the advantage disable gave never felt that oppressive to me. The situations where it came in handy were often very telegraphed. It required both skills, prediction and creativity to use effectively. It wasn't cheesy, it was creative.
Imprison is even more baffling imo. Let's be honest here, there were only ever three real users of imprison: Decidueye,mew and smeargle. Smeargle was really only used to counter Annihilape because Annihilape was so stupid - but that's irrelevant now. Sure, theoretically Smeargle can shut down anything with imprison but why not just ban Smeargle then - it was already a cheesy mon in this meta. Even if you use imprison smeargle to counter a threat you'd essentially need to match their moveset exactly, as smeargle is so frail that most moderately strong hits will blast it if your opponent has half decent coverage. Decidueye is honestly one of my favourite strats, but even then it was always very matchup reliant. Having a semi-reliable way to make progress versus corviknight, a spinblocker, hazard remover, knock off absorber and u-turn blocker was pretty healthy for this meta tbh. I don't think imprison was the problem here.
The argument "imprison let u target certain mons by carrying moves that they use in order to not allow them to ever click them at all or be used on a scarf smeargle to allow anything lower than scarf smeargle to have to switch." doesn't really hold up to scrutiy. The first part is just an explanation of what imprison does, not why this is unhealthy. Ironically, the same argument could be made for magnet pull - which was freed in the same post. Situationally useful, but deadweight otherwise. Scarf imprison smeargle is a gimmick that maybe does something in one out of a hundred matches. I can't really sugar coat it any other way, imprison smeargle is bad, and if it's so bad then ban smeargle - not imprison.
Echoing their points. At the end of the last time TM was omotm I felt like we were closing in on a stabilized meta where most of the outright, undeniably broken and competitive aspects were dealt with (para & annihilape for example). The first two weeks there were plenty of fires to put out and decision had to be made quickly and decisively, but imo that approach overstayed its welcome. The balacing act between creativity and bans isn't one dimensional. If you ban something centralizing that creates room for creativity, but bans can also be made too early - before an equilibrium can be found.
The second to last banlist was already right on that line imo, but disable and imprison really comes out of the blue. Neither of these felt like big problems when this was omotm. Sure, disable does screw you if you're choice'd, but that's kind of the point yeah? Outside of that scenario, the advantage disable gave never felt that oppressive to me. The situations where it came in handy were often very telegraphed. It required both skills, prediction and creativity to use effectively. It wasn't cheesy, it was creative.
Imprison is even more baffling imo. Let's be honest here, there were only ever three real users of imprison: Decidueye,
The argument "imprison let u target certain mons by carrying moves that they use in order to not allow them to ever click them at all or be used on a scarf smeargle to allow anything lower than scarf smeargle to have to switch." doesn't really hold up to scrutiy. The first part is just an explanation of what imprison does, not why this is unhealthy. Ironically, the same argument could be made for magnet pull - which was freed in the same post. Situationally useful, but deadweight otherwise. Scarf imprison smeargle is a gimmick that maybe does something in one out of a hundred matches. I can't really sugar coat it any other way, imprison smeargle is bad, and if it's so bad then ban smeargle - not imprison.
