Quickbanning Multiple Things That Depend on Each Other

[freezai]

For those of you who don't know, Scraggy and Sticky Web were both banned in LC, with Scraggy receiving a 12-0 vote and Sticky Web receiving a 10-2 vote.

However, both these things rely on each other. Scraggy happens to be Sticky Web's single biggest abuser. If you were to ban Scraggy first, it's questionable that Sticky Web would be ban-worthy, yet Sticky Web is getting banned because the vote is being held based on Sticky Web's merit with Scraggy in the tier. This is obviously illogical. The major distinction this situation has from other multiple quickban situations is that these two things are so directly related and their "brokeness" is, in (large) part, derived from one another, they aren't just coincidentally being banned at the same time.

Aside from the fact that suspect tests were eschewed for council-based quick bans (a story for another day), fundamentally, you should not be able to quick ban multiple things that directly depend on each other because you have no idea what will happen when you remove parts from a symbiotic relationship.

I am motioning that the Sticky Web ban should not be allowed to occur.

 

[Coconut]

Dearest Serene Grace,

As you can read from the post, Sticky Web was banned because of a lack of proper hazard control in the tier. Unfortunately Scraggy isn't the biggest abuser of Webs in the metagame. We already banned Woobat and Vullaby and the problem is still not fixed. Not only is it not fixed, but it has also become even more problematic to deal with as we also removed the best hazard control in the tier. You can correlate the reasoning all you like, but anything beyond that would be speculative. We simply do not have a way to remove webs.

I understand this is not the decision you would have liked to reach. I've been there before. Tiering is hard. This is the compromise we chose to take. I'm sorry that it didn't work out the way you wanted it to. Making a post motioning to choose the one you would like banned kinda just makes you seem like a child though. If this was such a problem, would it be okay if we banned Sticky Web first? Over half of the council made the opposite argument to the one you're making. Not only that, we're unbanning them along with a bunch of other things in the coming months. I'm asking for your patience moving forward because the new games are going to be very difficult, with a lot of moving parts.

 

[ABR]

You could, of course, run the infamous heavy duty boots if hazards are such an issue. This seems like a lazy refusal to stray from the conventions of juice and evio instead of allowing the organic symphony of balance to take place. No comment on scraggy but calling webs broken in a gen with boots available???

Also yea the simultaneous ban thing is heavily misguided.

 

[Shrug]

i mean, i don't disagree that the simultaneous ban was suboptimal, but the fact that you insist that the webs ban was the incorrect element is such a basic error in metagame reasoning that your post is hard to take seriously. saying webs is balanced in gen 8 lc is either a mistake in policy thinking or a mistake in analysis; i have no need to speculate as to which it is in this case. as for the simultaneous ban, the scraggy element was done in anticipation that it would not be balanced even after the possible metagame adaptations that had been theorized. it is not ideal, but there is a compelling public policy reason to do this in light of the upcoming tournaments and the imminent release of the new games. this part of the post: " you have no idea what will happen when you remove parts from a symbiotic relationship." is simply incorrect. you can understand with some degree of accuracy what will happen when you remove one element from the metagame if you understand it well enough. now, you can always make an argument against this, but it isnt what youve chosen to do.

 

[Berks]

For Serene, simultaneous bans are common to councils. Usage-based tiers have to weigh multiple powerful metagame influences at once whenever big usage shifts rock their tiers. It has been about a month since the Vullaby ban, which was very influential on the meta. This seems like the time when a PU or RU council would vote on the biggest problems in their tiers at the same time, so I would argue that the LC council made a good decision in doing so.

For ABR, from what I understand, Heavy-Duty Boots are primarily used in upper tiers to promote longevity in pivots. That longevity does not exist at level 5. The tradeoffs of bulk from Eviolite and Berry Juice, increased damage output from Life Orb or the rare Choice Band, or consistent speed from Choice Scarf make Heavy-Duty Boots a very niche pick in Little Cup that is mostly a matchup fish.

The LC council made an appropriate, precedented move that will stabilize the metagame away from matchup fishes, even if it came in the form of a double ban. This is not an issue we should seriously consider in Policy Review.