Well, it looks like your cries have been heard and prayers have been answered because....
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| G-Luke | Tapler | KaenSoul | kennukem | Giagantic |
Palafin | Ban | Abstain | Ban | Ban | Ban |
Rage Fist | Ban | Abstain | Ban | Ban | Ban |
Extreme Speed | Ban | Ban | Ban | Ban | Ban |
Transform | Ban | Ban | Ban | Ban | Ban |
Chi Yu | Ban | Ban | Ban | Abstain | Ban |
Iron Hands | Ban | Do Not Ban | Do Not Ban | Abstain | Ban |
Chien Pao | Do Not Ban | Do Not Ban | Do Not Ban | Abstain | Do Not Ban |
Population Bomb | Do Not Ban | Do Not Ban | Do Not Ban | Do Not Ban | Do Not Ban |
Garganacl | Do Not Ban | Ban | Do Not Ban | Do Not Ban | Do Not Ban |
Palafin has proven itself once again to be one of the most dangerous offensive sweepers and wallbreakers in Convergence. With the departure of Dondozo, defensive counterplay for the fish has proven to be nonexistent, and even then Taunt Bulk Up sets were able to use it as set up bait. Now, there is no way to reliably check it. In Convergence, Palafin has also gained Recover and Swords Dance, giving it's offensive sets even more ways to challenge the metagame. Players were forced to try and stack multiple Water resists for Palafin, which crumbled if Rain was up, and absolutely fumbled once Bulk Up and Swords Dance popped into the conversation. Ultimately, this was deemed too strong and led to Palafin's ban.
Rage Fist has propelled it's users to the forefront of our metagame, making each of the prominent abusers some of the most dangerous offensive Pokémon, each in multiple different ways. The most popular abuser is Tauros-Paldea, who employs No Retreat + Rage Fist to snowball and clean up games, or even outright winning in its own once it gets a chance to set up safely. Variants from Defiant to Prankster to Iron Fist showed up, but ultimately Guts proved to be it's defacto ability choice in order to stop Will O Wisps from ending it's sweep. It often ran Flame Orb to avoid Toxic or Paralysis crippling it's sweep, bolstering it's power. Regen + Intim cores and the return of Purifying Salts Garganacl to try and counteract it. Unfortunately sets featuring Bulk Up in addition to No Retreat and Lefties began surfacing, essentially forcing Regen cores to actually hit it since it could no longer be worn down by Flame Orb. But all of this, you may ask why not ban Tauros? Well unfortunately Tauros may be the most popular, but is certainly not the sole problematic abuser of Rage Fist. Passimian pulls off the exact same set well, trading a decent speed tier for more hulk and power (pairs particularly nice on Webs or Hazard stack), Hariyama has started running Prankster Copycat to spam priority boosted Rage Fists, and lastly but certainly not least, Annihilape himself, the OG abuser, lurks in the shadows to wreck havoc on sets that try and over prepare for Tauros and Ilk just like it does in OU. In the end, Rage Fist, and not a singular abuser was singled out as the underlying issue at hand and was thus banned.
Extreme Speed is a popular form of speed control in multiple metagame's and is the reason for Dragonite's high success in OU. It is even much better here, as Dragonite has become an even stronger threat with access to STAB Brave Bird, or if one opts, can skip to Salamence who trades bulk for a big speed boost and sweep teams with efficiency after a Tera, especially if they run Moxie as their ability choice to snowball hard. Haxorus has also proven itself to be a disgusting breaker thanks to having the highest Attack stat of any ESpeed user and Mold Breaker to bypass common stopgaps like Unware, turning it into an Arceus level threat after 1 turn of set up. But the Dragon types are not the only Extreme Speed users, in fact, perhaps the most powerful users of the move are the pure Fire types. Cinderace grants Libero, making every pure Fire type STAB on Extreme Speed from the get go, and paired with either Swords Dance or Belly Drum, set up moves that still let them keep STAB on Extreme Speed, they can go ham. And this doesn't mention Terastilization, which stacks with Protean making them pure normal prior to use, stacking multipliers on multiples, often leaving offensive teams with next to no recourse outside of fast Ghost types, which are susceptible to coverage moves. As long as Extreme Speed is in the tier, offense will be put in an incredible stranglehold which leads to horrible stagnation with the multiple different varieties who each require separate counterplay, left us no other choice but to ban the move.
Transform is uncompetitive. It forces bizzare interactions and forces players with a strong set up sweeper, especially a specially based one, to be forced to design their Pokémon to be able to always be able to defeat that set in addition to multiple other threats. In a metagame which lacks the massive toolbox that Balanced Hackmons has, this strain on team building was deemed uncompetitive to face, and thus will be banned from Convergence.
Chi-Yu needs no explanation. Chi Yu was initially let into our metagame because of multiple options which were able to at the very least check it, or hinder it's progress making ability. Unfortunately, one by one these tools started disappearing. Rain, Iron Bundle, Dondozo, Speed Boost, all options that overshadowed or outright checked Chi Yu began to be banned, and what was left was a metagame where Sun is one of the most powerful playstyles in the tier thanks to all the new and versatile setters and abusers, defensive counterplay that boiled down to AV Garganacl, Well Baked Body Fairy types and Thick Fat Blissey. Even with these extremely limited options of defensively answering Chi Yu, Chi Yu somehow gained options to bypass them, with Solar Beam being a legit option on sun builds to blow past AV Garg, Sludge Bomb being able to cleave any Fairy that tries to switch in and Thick Fat Blissey/Chansey simply being an unoptimal way of running the Pokémon, as it would much rather run abilities like Aroma Veil, Intimidate and Natural Cure. At the end of the day, Chi-Yu still did what Chi-Yu always done, and forced the meta in an uncomfortable position with it's very lacking answers. It was thus deemed banworthy.
Thanks for reading this in detail reasoning for these bat h of quickbans for Convergence. If you desire to hear another council member's thought process on their ban reasonings, feel free to ask for them. These will most likely be our last quickbans for the remainder of our tenure as OMotM unless something extreme happens during our metagame's lifespan or development. For now, will be indicating to
Kris to implement these bans ASAP please. Thanks for tuning in!