I've been following this thread and finally had the time and energy to respond to a bunch of stuff all at once, so this might get a little long.
Before talking about mega latias, I'll give my opinion on how the uu suspect process is going, now that we are 3 suspects in since the release of s&m.
This suspect process has been excruciatingly slow, taking a full month to complete each suspect test. The process is two weeks of suspecting, one week of voting, 3 days for uu suspect ladder to switch back to uu, and 5 more days for the banned pokemon to get taken off the ladder. We are now approaching a full year of S&M, and uu is unbalanced due to being unable to keep up with drops. If this extremely slow suspect process continues after the release of Ultra S&M, uu will remain unbalanced for the rest of this year and into next year. There a few ways to shorten this suspect process. One way is to suspect multiple pokemon at once. I thought the heracross / mgarde double suspect went well and saw no problem is suspecting multiple pokemon. Another way to speed up suspect tests is to allow people to vote as soon as they get their reqs, so that there doesnt have to be a full week for "voting." (Xurkitree, mgarde / heracross, and weavile's voting periods were all a full week).
While I understand your concerns, both of these proposed solutions are impractical. Suspecting multiple Pokemon at the same time makes it harder for us to isolate problems and increases the risk of banning something that isn't broken or not banning something that
is broken because another Pokemon being tested at the same time skews the voters' perceptions.
Allowing people to vote as soon as they get their reqs causes far more problems than it solves. The suspect process requires that a vote achieve a certain majority in order to ban a Pokemon from UU or unban a Pokemon from BL. Allowing people to vote as they get their reqs instead of after the suspect period either means that the first voters decide the outcome or that we still have to wait for an arbitrary number of voters to achieve reqs and cast their vote. The second situation essentially already exists (the current "arbitrary number of voters" is "enough voters out of the players who earned reqs within the two week period to mathematically decide the result one way or the other"). Allowing users to vote earlier doesn't change the fact that the end of the voting period is still the earlier of either the voting deadline or the moment that the vote is mathematically decided and a TL is available to tally the votes and announce the result unless you want to restrict the vote to a certain number of people (the first [x] users to earn reqs), which defeats the point of having a deadline to begin with, prevents players who don't have time to ladder early and often from voting, and isn't fair to people who don't earn reqs until later on in the suspect period, whether this be because they don't have time to ladder early, need more games to reach the requisite COIL, just don't feel like playing until the Saturday before the deadline, or whatever other reason they may have for laddering late. Additionally, since the Tier Leaders have to grant users permission to post in voting threads, your proposed system also creates more work for the Tier Leaders by forcing them to adjust individual user permissions as users earn reqs instead of just doing so in one big batch when the thread goes up.
I agree with you wholeheartedly about the m-latias. I'd like to make a suggestion though.
For the OU By technicality (Garchomp-Mega, Latios-Mega), I wonder if it would be a good idea to allow that pokemon in a lower tier but it would HAVE to hold that megastone (illegal w/o the megastone, legal with that megastone). Mega Latios would be easier to handle (less defenses, although slightly higher SpA could be an issue). Still be good, but not banworthy.
Mega Garchomp on the other hand might be too much. Seems like a diggersby or mega heracross in that it is a medium-slow but VERY HARD hitting physical attacker. Costs the mega slot though, and 4x ice weakness and 2x fairy weakness really hurts.
This is legal: the thing on the bottom. (Same with mega-chomp under my proposal)
Anyone like my proposal? (OU by technicality can go to UU but those pokemon HAVE to hold the megastone).
This has been proposed multiple times through various avenues (the forums, the UU room on PS!, the official UU Discord server, etc.) and been shot down every time. If we allow, say, Mega Garchomp in UU under the specified conditions, nothing stops a player from just never clicking the Mega Evolution button and having what is essentially an itemless Garchomp that takes reduced damage from Knock Off. There's currently no way to force a player to Mega Evolve a Pokemon (and there shouldn't be, as strategically choosing when to Mega Evolve is an important aspect of using Pokemon like Mega Sharpedo, Mega Manectric, and Mega Steelix), so this proposal comes way too close to the "[Pokemon] isn't broken without [item/move/ability]" argument used in favor of complex clauses that run counter to Smogon's established tiering philosophy.
I just find it disturbing that they let you be in charge of the VR thread.
Also this: It is disturbing that a balance staple that is supposed to be a good special and Dragon check in Sylveon gets completely dismantled by Latias Mega.
It doesn't get completely dismantled. Things will look scary if you analyze them in a vacuum, but you have to see things from a big game perspective i.e. Rocks, prior damage, which phase of the game you're in to fully make a judgement on MLatias. Hogg and co have analyzed MLatias from this position, whereas you posted calcs and theoretical situations that rarely reflect reality, Boris Johnson.
Personal attacks don't make people take you or your arguments more seriously. Be civil, please.
Couldn't we just reduce the amount of pokemon dropping to UU by changing it so that only pokemon with a usage rate of (insert lower percentage here) or below drop?
Not to contradict Hogg, but this is technically possible. However, it's a decision that would impact Smogon's tiering philosophy as a whole and thus must be made at a higher level than the tier leadership. There's no real need to alter the sitewide tiering system in order to correct a situation we already have the tools to rectify.
Anyway, I'm of the opinion that Mega Latias's combination of bulk, power, speed, and versatility make it too strong for the tier. While every set techically
has counterplay, it's much harder to include
reliable counterplay to Mega Latias on a team because it can run so many sets, each of which have different answers, and those options may not be able to handle Z-Crystal or Life Orb Latias sets, which still represent significant threats in the current meta. This metagame is already oversaturated with threats and Mega Latias significantly exacerbates the problem.
