What an incredibly biased post.
I can't formally respond to all of them so let's just say that Greninja its included in group xyz for the sake of arguments.
Xyz encompassed the entirety of the current Mons considered viable in the meta. Abc is all other Mons.
Currently the argument for banning Greninja is that we want to get more Mons from group abc into group xyz because we like them and think the game will be more fun with them.
It's literally the same thing every time ban discussions come up, it follows this model.
Now, it may just be that my experience in other meta games like ccgs or ttrpgs is different, but I am more used to the idea that the smaller variance the better because you want the more skilled player to win, and you want the skill to be the determining factor. This community seems to either have the opposite approach, or just has a lot more members who are vocal about it. Not sure.
If the goal is to make more Pokemon viable in the meta, then by all means be find with the frog, but from a balance stand point the numbers don't support the claims.
I still have yet to hear the definition of a healthy meta game. I suppose the definition that I want to hear is someone saying that it is when: "any team play style is competitively viable and does not require the player to run any specific Pokemon to fill a role or cannot run that style because the Pokemon needed to fill that role are forced to be labeled unviable because of a threat. If that is the case, then that threat can be demonstrably isolated as the problem and deserves to be banned."
But no one said that, they all just kinda took shots at me instead.
Truth is, Greninja is incredibly powerful, and I possibly could have been secretly on the ban side this whole time while trying to incite intellectual discussion about the nature of game balance as a concept rather than the back and forth arguments we've had about "omg Greninja OP, 4mss OP, too fast OP, no counters O fucking P"
I'm sure the frog will be gone, and I'm sure that he deserves it. I just want us as a community to better understand why, beyond the obvious I guess.
I don't want to sound hostile, but you seem to be cherry picking here, or at least take what people said and fit them into your argument.
The truth about Greninja is that it is a low risk high reward pokemon that shifts the balance of momentum to whichever player brings it safely on 9 out of 10 scenarios given its godlike speed tier and the paranoia aspect of its coverage being adjustable on what needs to be removed on the basis of its team, or even as a lure for desirable targets.
You might say, what it has to do with my alphabet talk and how I will cherry pick the next two post in order to make them sound like every suspect test was irrelevant?
Well sit and read my friend.
Greninja does has its fare of checks, even for its most unorthodox builds that are deemed uncompetitive by a huge sample of players in showdown, but most of those checks have a subpar viability, don't get me wrong I love tentacruel when coupled with sableye, but as many good quirks tentacruel and empoleon might have they are subpar choices for several team archetypes be either by type redundancy, conflicting with a defensive core or overall being momentum killers on said archetypes, but the point is that most players are forced to run these pokemon on very specialized sets to check a near omnipresent threath in the metagame wich is the one we are discussing here.
And that's why my friend the checks you and a couple of users have been treating as a flavorless canned alphabet soup are often hated or deemed unlikable in the OU metagame as with Greninja gone their sole niche in those teams is gone allowing them to experiment with team building.
And notice I said their niche as a Greninja check in those team "ARCHETYPES", I'm not saying those pokemon are bad, but they are just suboptimal in those archetypes and outside of their optimal team setup. Don't try to cherry pick the fact that those checks have no reason to be on those teams outside of the "let's hope Greninja isn't carrying X move so I can check it".... If that sounds wrong to you, don't worry it means you are sane.
With that said and as many has stabilised already the problem lies in Greninja partial omnipresence given its qualities both as a revenge killer and a "offensive support" to HO, and against it unless a fast mega is active on the field or a pokemon is sacked to gain the momentum with a scarf user.
In risk of sounding repetitive I'll enclose my argument on Greninja calling it an overcentralizing treath to team building, and a quite cancerous one in the fact that it's so Damm adaptable an easy to use there is almost no reason not to run one.
Oh I almost missed your point on preference of a group of pokemon over another, don't worry I ain't cherry picking bro.
Well the fact is that the undesired and unvisited pokemon that rose in usage during Greninja reign are quite underwhelming to use outside of their specific niche, or the forced niche that was created on the hopeless attempt of Showdown users to "adapt" to a cancerous and omnipresent threath on the metagame. Wich bring the second point of your argument as to why chose vowels over consonants? Well my friend the Greninja checks are pretty much the kind of consonants that are redundant or useless outside of attempting to check Greninja in some team archetypes, and the vowels that are deemed as inferior choices or can't compete for a team slot due to them being turned into momentum killers due to an omnipresent cancerous lump on the ladder and on the collective team building process over the subpar check attempts to said cancerous presence. Without those pokemon several cores are dismantled wich risk the team composition of those archetypes to the point they are either too focused on dealing with a threath they can work on other threath the ladder posses. And that Mr I'll find a way to cherry pick this is why Greninja and some pokemon that where banned before him not only become centralizing forces on OU, but put other pokemon and even play styles as unviable due to a trend that refuses to die in the showdown collective as it is efficient, specially with Greninja high reward low risk nature. That to some extent was always present on every suspect tested pokemon in the 6th generation.
Hope it helps, I'm on cellphone so don't ask for calcs or edits. And autocorrect is a bitch...
