MANNAT
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Now I'm no council member and I can't guarantee that this thread will sway the actions of the council, but I’m an avid BW OU player and want to encourage discussion about the tier outside of the restrictive setting of Policy Review. I want to use this thread as a medium to discuss whether or not you guys believe Excadrill needs to be banned/nerfed and if so, how you would personally nerf it. The idea to make this thread mainly stemmed from sed’s post in PR saying that some of the voters for the test couldn’t even post in PR, so this is more of an open discussion medium. I’ll kick off this discussion with my own opinion and hopefully this thread will have some constructive discussion about Excadrill prior to the impending vote about it.
Personally, I believe that Excadrill is fine as it currently is. Sand teams are equipped with numerous, highly viable Pokémon that can comfortably beat Air Balloon Excadrill such as Skarmory, Superpower Landorus-T, and Rotom-W. All these Pokémon are top tier offensive and defensive threats and naturally fulfil a variety of roles aside from just checking Excadrill. I understand that Excadrill is fairly constricting as it forces certain sand structures, such as teams that use Superpower Landorus-T minimizing mons that let in for free, but that fact remains true for a myriad of offensive threats. Scarf Keldeo on rain is an incredible threat to sand teams without Amoonguss or Jellicent and forces similar structures of mons that don’t let it in for free and it’s not considered as “broken” as Excadrill is. Another large part of the benefit of Excadrill is that it enables non-sand archetypes to have a chance in the hazard game against MG Psychic sand teams while not completely tilting the hazard game in their favor. In spite of all of this, I understand why people dislike the immense pressure that Excadrill puts on sand teams even if I don’t agree that it’s reached an extent where it’s banworthy, so if it’s considered broken I believe we should blanket ban all weather speed-boosting abilities while removing existing complex bans involving these abilities as it’s more in line with smogon’s current tie ring philosophy.
Agree with my opinion? Disagree? Do you think something aside from Excadrill is problematic in BW OU? Let me know your thoughts in this thread!