Current GSC OU is quite a balanced metagame with a plethora of viable playstyles. Offense is as good as it has ever been, as Cloyster is one of the very best Pokémon in the tier and Forretress also functions as a pretty solid spiker for some of these teams. More balanced teams that have both Spikes and Spin Pokémon are also quite good right now, as both Starmie and Golem are great at checking multiple threats in the tier while also providing the much appreciated Spin support. Stall is also an extremely viable and good option in the tier, as GSC definitely offers multiple solutions to the various threats the playstyle can face.
That being said, there are two elements in the tier right now that I think swing certain matchups into extremely coinflippy scenarios: Sand Attack Skarmory stall and Agility Pass teams. The first is a more competitively-viable approach since most Agility Pass teams can get beat with most viable builds and proper gameplan, so I'll start with that.
Sand Attack completely invalidates one of the best answers offense has against stall in CurseLix, meaning Skarmory can repeatedly come in on it and force scenarios where Lix is essentially forced to risk a low accuracy Boom which can lose you the game outright. If you respect Sand Attack in the builder, the possibilities of teams get extremely narrowed, as you have to come up with different alternatives to break through Skarmory which are suboptimal in every single other matchup.
This is similar to Tentacruel stall, as Tentacruel completely shuts down the two most common spikers in the tier and essentially forces you to either have a dedicated slot to beating stall (like Vap) or spinblocking alternatives to prevent it from keeping hazards off for free the whole game. The key difference here is that Tentacruel doesn't base its usage purely on RNG, while Sand Attack Skarmory does, and even in the matchups where Tentacruel's Spin is limited, there is still room for outplaying your opponent with correct predictions and aggressive plays (see OmBrArch vs me in SPL week 7, where I had a very good matchup into Tentacruel stall but OmBrArch managed to win the game by making a multitude of correct plays + having Tyranitar to trap my Gengar).
Sand Attack Skarmory essentially makes Steelix offense completely reliant on hitting a low accuracy Boom and turns these matchups into rolling a dice. This single move essentially eliminates one of the few standard ways to beat stall and makes it extremely annoying to prepare vs, because, like I said, your options in the builder are extremely limited if you respect Sand Attack.
Now onto the second problem, Agility Pass teams are also extremely flippy and uncompetitive. It's evident that things like BD Lax and SD Marowak can get out of hand if you don't properly plan around them, and although it is true that most respectable competitive teams automatically have tools to handle Agility Pass decently well, that doesn't exclude the fact that they can be extremely uncompetitive in multiple scenarios.
Agility Pass essentially forces you to carefully plan out, from turn 1, what all your plays are gonna be in a game. Since Smeargle can Spore any phazing options, the first chain can quite literally decide a game on the spot. Smeargle leading turn 1 vs offense and getting Agilty off means you are forced into your phazer early in the match. Whether your opponent is gonna predict the phazer to come in and Spore turn 2 or just raw Baton Pass and start the chain turn 2 is really up to them, but this is already a "50/50" scenario that is extremely problematic when dealing vs these teams. And then we have a situation where your opponent can pass to any of Snorlax, Scizor, Marowak or Machamp (the last 2 depending on their coverage options). If they pass to Marowak and and force you into your Cloyster, the game is literally decided by Rock Slide flinching or not. On the same note, usually these teams dedicate one of Marowak/Machamp to run HP Bug to kill Exeggutor for the other, but they can also run Substitute/Protect to troll Boom.
To sum it up, any game vs Agility Pass becomes a guessing game of 1) whether your opponent is gonna Spore your phazer with Smeargle early or start the chain; 2) whether or not Rock Slide from Marowak is gonna flinch Cloyster or not; 3) whether or not Marowak/Machamp are running a coverage option to nuke one of their common checks to assist the other or if they're running Protect/Sub to troll Boom. It makes the game extremely flippy and uncompetitive, and therefore should also not be a viable strategy.
That said, I firmly believe GSC is the most competitive and balanced old generation right now, as every playstyle is viable and you can effectively implement multiple different tools in the builder to assist you in particular matchups. These 2 playstyles, however, are extremely uncompetitive and flip games on their heads, as they make RNG the deciding factor in every single game they're brought in. When it comes to Sand Attack, this limits the options you have in the builder tremendously, as you can't rely on one of stall's most common answers to beat it anymore. When it comes to Agility Pass, even though you can likely be solid against it with any common competitive team, you can lose games extremely early on based on a single "50/50" lost.
So, with all that in mind, here are the solutions I propose:
Sand Attack - we should ban the move entirely, as it is a purely RNG based strategy that makes it uncompetitive. This is also true for moves like Swagger, Attract and Confuse Ray, but they are not as problematic as they are not used nearly as much. I also think all of these moves should probably be banned to improve the tier, but that can be a conversation for the future.
Baton Pass - there are 2 options here:
1) limit the Baton Pass users to 1 user per team: this would prevent Pass chains and solve its issues; or
2) ban Speed passing: this would allow players to deal with Baton Pass without having to rely on the coinflippy/RNG scenarios (e.g. Marowak flinching Cloyster early game and literally ending the game).
Both of these options are better than a raw Baton Pass ban since other type of Baton Pass teams are healthy and bring for variety to the tier (e.g. Growth Passing from Jolteon/Vaporeon/Espeon which we have seen multiple times this SPL).
That being said, there are two elements in the tier right now that I think swing certain matchups into extremely coinflippy scenarios: Sand Attack Skarmory stall and Agility Pass teams. The first is a more competitively-viable approach since most Agility Pass teams can get beat with most viable builds and proper gameplan, so I'll start with that.
Sand Attack completely invalidates one of the best answers offense has against stall in CurseLix, meaning Skarmory can repeatedly come in on it and force scenarios where Lix is essentially forced to risk a low accuracy Boom which can lose you the game outright. If you respect Sand Attack in the builder, the possibilities of teams get extremely narrowed, as you have to come up with different alternatives to break through Skarmory which are suboptimal in every single other matchup.
This is similar to Tentacruel stall, as Tentacruel completely shuts down the two most common spikers in the tier and essentially forces you to either have a dedicated slot to beating stall (like Vap) or spinblocking alternatives to prevent it from keeping hazards off for free the whole game. The key difference here is that Tentacruel doesn't base its usage purely on RNG, while Sand Attack Skarmory does, and even in the matchups where Tentacruel's Spin is limited, there is still room for outplaying your opponent with correct predictions and aggressive plays (see OmBrArch vs me in SPL week 7, where I had a very good matchup into Tentacruel stall but OmBrArch managed to win the game by making a multitude of correct plays + having Tyranitar to trap my Gengar).
Sand Attack Skarmory essentially makes Steelix offense completely reliant on hitting a low accuracy Boom and turns these matchups into rolling a dice. This single move essentially eliminates one of the few standard ways to beat stall and makes it extremely annoying to prepare vs, because, like I said, your options in the builder are extremely limited if you respect Sand Attack.
Now onto the second problem, Agility Pass teams are also extremely flippy and uncompetitive. It's evident that things like BD Lax and SD Marowak can get out of hand if you don't properly plan around them, and although it is true that most respectable competitive teams automatically have tools to handle Agility Pass decently well, that doesn't exclude the fact that they can be extremely uncompetitive in multiple scenarios.
Agility Pass essentially forces you to carefully plan out, from turn 1, what all your plays are gonna be in a game. Since Smeargle can Spore any phazing options, the first chain can quite literally decide a game on the spot. Smeargle leading turn 1 vs offense and getting Agilty off means you are forced into your phazer early in the match. Whether your opponent is gonna predict the phazer to come in and Spore turn 2 or just raw Baton Pass and start the chain turn 2 is really up to them, but this is already a "50/50" scenario that is extremely problematic when dealing vs these teams. And then we have a situation where your opponent can pass to any of Snorlax, Scizor, Marowak or Machamp (the last 2 depending on their coverage options). If they pass to Marowak and and force you into your Cloyster, the game is literally decided by Rock Slide flinching or not. On the same note, usually these teams dedicate one of Marowak/Machamp to run HP Bug to kill Exeggutor for the other, but they can also run Substitute/Protect to troll Boom.
To sum it up, any game vs Agility Pass becomes a guessing game of 1) whether your opponent is gonna Spore your phazer with Smeargle early or start the chain; 2) whether or not Rock Slide from Marowak is gonna flinch Cloyster or not; 3) whether or not Marowak/Machamp are running a coverage option to nuke one of their common checks to assist the other or if they're running Protect/Sub to troll Boom. It makes the game extremely flippy and uncompetitive, and therefore should also not be a viable strategy.
That said, I firmly believe GSC is the most competitive and balanced old generation right now, as every playstyle is viable and you can effectively implement multiple different tools in the builder to assist you in particular matchups. These 2 playstyles, however, are extremely uncompetitive and flip games on their heads, as they make RNG the deciding factor in every single game they're brought in. When it comes to Sand Attack, this limits the options you have in the builder tremendously, as you can't rely on one of stall's most common answers to beat it anymore. When it comes to Agility Pass, even though you can likely be solid against it with any common competitive team, you can lose games extremely early on based on a single "50/50" lost.
So, with all that in mind, here are the solutions I propose:
Sand Attack - we should ban the move entirely, as it is a purely RNG based strategy that makes it uncompetitive. This is also true for moves like Swagger, Attract and Confuse Ray, but they are not as problematic as they are not used nearly as much. I also think all of these moves should probably be banned to improve the tier, but that can be a conversation for the future.
Baton Pass - there are 2 options here:
1) limit the Baton Pass users to 1 user per team: this would prevent Pass chains and solve its issues; or
2) ban Speed passing: this would allow players to deal with Baton Pass without having to rely on the coinflippy/RNG scenarios (e.g. Marowak flinching Cloyster early game and literally ending the game).
Both of these options are better than a raw Baton Pass ban since other type of Baton Pass teams are healthy and bring for variety to the tier (e.g. Growth Passing from Jolteon/Vaporeon/Espeon which we have seen multiple times this SPL).
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