Smogon Forums

Why would you ban spikes before you would ban SR? Spikes make typical defoggers more viable than spinners, and both make strong pokemon (D nite, Talon, Bisharp, Scizor) not switch in freely. It should just be the tier adapting to team archetypes that deal with the best stuff in the tier.

I was more referring to bw, which is the ou I played, albeit very poorly. Idk I just find it odd that every meta reverts to spiking once the broken or borderline threats are gone, sr is a given even with those threats. I guess the best analogue to why spikes before sr is ss + drizzle over rain in general; you find a way to excise the element breaking a subset of a playstyle (here, spiking offense or balance as a subset of regular offense or balance; in the analogy, ss sweeper-archetypes as a subset of rain) without jeopardizing the playstyle itself. An sr ban would power-fuck offense in most tiers instead of removing the worst part I understand this is imperfect, particularly in ORAS where spiking balance is more common than spiking offense and Defog exists, plus I'm assuming it to be broken based on the evidence that it's always the Best Last Thing, but it feels a bit missy-ish in its the last thing in the Meta and super centralizing when it is

To chime in, I think a piece of it is that the absurdly powerful things in each meta get banned (rightfully so) until we're left with moderately powerful threats who are generally fairly fast. Stuff like Mega Alakazam in today's meta can generally 2HKO or 3HKO a lot on things from full at worst, but with enough hazard support (rocks and full spikes) they can just clean lategame. That's probably why spikes become so common – they actually make a large impact after the stuff that doesn't need them is gone.

What's also interesting is that in ORAS we have a lot more tools to deal with it, in the forms of defog and especially Mega Sableye. And guess what some people are calling to be suspected now? (Other than goth ofc)