Hey everyone, good afernoon! This is going to be my longest post in a while, so please bear with me! There's a lot to unpack here, so here goes:
Balancing Shared Power: Is It Possible?
Preface and Introduction
Saying it's been a crazy 2 weeks is an understatement. The poll on what path we should take for the future of the metagame is super close, and since the tiering decisions are beginning to get more difficult, I have decided to take action on this and address some things. If we, the community, get stuck on the thought that Shared Power will never be balanced, then it will surely stay that way. If we try hard to make this as fun of a metagame as possible while retaining enough interesting matchups to make it interesting, that will leave everyone happy. I understand that a metagame where every Pokemon has 6 abilities sounds tough to balance, but after removing the problematic abilities, the metagame will begin to undoubtedly diversify. I can't do that by myself, though. The concerns regarding the lack of activity in the existing Shared Power council has been heard loud and clear, and we have decided to take action.
Please welcome and congratulate the newest members of the Shared Power council!!
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SamHPL
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that ivy guy
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Kris
Their passion and contributions towards the tier have not gone unnoticed! They will help me with future tiering decisions as well as to review decisions already made. Let's get straight to business. The whole
Magic Guard vs
Multiscale ban situation has gone way out of hand. The division this has caused among the community has been unacceptable in my eyes, and we have to do something about it. Currently, Multiscale is unbanned, and Magic Guard is banned. After venturing into the ladder, Sturdy does the same thing as Multiscale and is what's enabling Magic Guard to still be broken. As a result,
my current stance is to BAN Sturdy.
Next up is Skill Link. It is evident to me that banning Mega Beedrill was a mistake. Skill Link teams continue to dominate even with much less powerful options in Cincinno, Cloyster, and even Ambipom. The sign that this playstyle is still so dominant even with a crucial Pokemon gone is a telling sign that the Pokemon is not what enables the problem to exist, but rather, it's the ability. Skill Link is overshadowing many otherwise interesting playstyles from flourishing simply because it does so overwhelmingly well against opposing offensive teams. It's proven to also adapt to defensive counterplay. Stamina, an otherwise great countermeasure, is useless as the majority of Skill Link teams run Unaware to negate it. Because of this,
my stance on this is to BAN Skill Link and UNBAN Mega Beedrill.
Lastly, there has been a lot of controversy concerning the Harvest ban. Harvest teams usually rely on fast Pokemon setting up Substitutes in order for them to activate a berry, usually Starf Berry, reliably. This same Subsitute + Prankster strategy also enables the use for a very dangerous playstyle that relies on PP stalling in tandem with Regenerator and other defensive abilities. Not even APS (anti-priority setup) can stop their presence, as they do not immunify their moves. Since complex bans are always reserved for extreme cases,
my stance as of now is to UNBAN Harvest and BAN Substitute.
The Dilemma
Lastly, I want to go more into detail about the whole Magic Guard vs Multiscale situation. The community has deemed Magic Guard and Multiscale to be an obvious problem, but is unsure as to which approach. I will try to analyze both solutions, in an objective matter this time. Magic Guard is insanely good on its own- despite being obviously broken in tandem with Sturdy/Multiscale. It does a lot of things at once. Removing the need for recoil, removing the need for hazards, and removing any and all passive damage is a boon for just about any Pokemon, and it is obvious that Magic Guard is quite centralizing. But is this necessarily a bad thing? Magic Guard keeps many otherwise-broken strategies like Innards Out in check, and despite making certain playstyles like hazard stacking unviable, also makes other playstyles a lot better. An example of this is teams that utilize Solar Power. Sun teams are super fun to play and use and actually have a pretty decent matchup against a lot of the tier's archetype. The removal of Magic Guard would make such a playstyle unviable anymore. Conversely, the metagame doesn't really progress as much when Multiscale is on its own. Multiscale is what enables Regenerator to be so good, because it helps you regain your Multiscale every time you switch out. These infinite switching battles are toxic towards the development of the metagame, and keeping Multiscale does nothing but enhance this.
I've listened to a lot of good points made by
Jrsmash9 and others who oppose a Magic Guard ban in Shared Power. Personally, it is my stance that Magic Bounce should not be banned (not right away) if Magic Guard is banned, as this would be a ban based on speculation. I want to thank
E4 Flint for helping me realize this, and judging by his experience leading one of the most well-managed OMs on Showdown, it is advice worth listening to. That being said, after viewing both sides of the issue, my personal stance remains to keep Multiscale banned and to allow Magic Guard to remain in Shared Power. I will be open-minded about this during the coming days and listen to opposing opinions as well as keep an eye on the poll. Nobody likes it whenever the word "necessary evil" comes up, but in Magic Guard's case, I believe it is applicable. Despite being the clear best ability in the game, Magic Guard keeps playstyles from becoming out of control, and creates new playstyles on its own. This is worth the cost of the playstyles that Magic Guard does hinder (in my opinion). I'm going to pull up the tiering policy's definition of what "broken" is:
III.) Broken - elements that are too good relative to the rest of the metagame such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant
Magic Guard, while being good, is not too good relative to the rest of the metagame's abilities, and does not inhibit skillful play to a point where it is almost always rendered irrelevant. While Magic Guard's usage is heavily suggested on most teams, it is completely possible to build an effective team that does not utilize Magic Guard. In reality, the lack of hazards actually means that Magic Guard is intrinsically helping every single team that doesn't use it. It offers hazard protection even when it's not present on the team, due to the fact that hazards are seldom used. In my eyes, this is a sign that Magic Guard is healthy and enables variety in teambuilding. One last thing to note is that Magic Guard has three viable users in Alakazam, Clefable, and Reuniclus that all fit onto 3 distinct playstyles, limiting the lack of diversity that it is argued to place.
C.) Examples also include ones whose only counters or checks are extraordinarily gimmicky Pokemon that would put the team at a large disadvantage elsewhere. These examples also limit team building skill.
It does not take extraordinarily measures to beat Magic Guard teams. Magic Guard isn't an ability that makes Pokemon hit harder than they should or makes Pokemon harder to take down. What it does do is compress a lot of different things into one ability, similar to Landorus-T in OU. While yes, Landorus-T cannot perform all of its roles at once, Magic Guard performing all of its roles at once is not broken by the philosophy's definition and keeps the metagame stable in a similar way to Landorus-T, which is where the comparison draws from. This concludes my section on the argument. I know it's a lot to go through, but they're my full thoughts on this argument. I repeat, I am open minded about this and I hope you all can be too.
This isn't me saying Multiscale is staying banned- this is me inviting you to disagree with me and formally discuss this. To conclude:
Potential For Balance
A metagame where 6 abilities are active at once is inherently going to be very hard to tier. However, if we take action against the abilities that are problematic and ban them, the metagame will be balanced. I understand the matchup-based nature of the metagame is inescapeable, but it is possible to minimize this aspect of Shared Power and allow for there to be enough interesting matchups to keep the metagame interesting. A lot of people seem to forget that the metagame is
less than 2 months old, and that we haven't exactly been given time to help us balance things. It's appropriate to give up on a metagame's viability 4 or more months in, but with such a young metagame, I don't think it is. The plan with Shared Power has never been balance, but rather playability. I change my mind on this, and the end goal of my leadership in Shared Power is to have balance present in the metagame.
Furthermore, I have no plans at the moment to let this project of mine die at the end of the month. We have a very dedicated playerbase (shoutouts to
DatHeatmor SamHPL Jrsmash9 Level 1000 Weedle Akumeoy W0rm and everyone who I missed) with side projects on it in the future. It's up to the rest of the community as to whether you want to bear with me or not during the coming days and months of this metagame's existence. Our ladder has been amazingly active right now, and I do believe SP has the potential to become something bigger than it currently is. But before any of that comes balance. With the bans listed above, I hope you can all understand the direction the metagame is headed in, and understand that it is an effort directed towards balance. Once again, you are free to disagree with anything and everything I just said, and you are more than welcome to voice your disagreements here. One last thing I wanted to get out of the way:
I really don't appreciate these one-liner posts that have come up in the thread. If you have a simple question, ask the
OM room and you will get an answer in seconds. These types of posts do nothing but clutter the thread and make it an eyesore for anyone scrolling through pages, so I kindly ask that posts are put some amount of thought into. A recent example is that they've gotten in the way of the Magic Guard debate, and it actually hides some good points made by both sides. Just don't do it please. With that out of the way, I've said all that I needed to say about this.
To recap:
BAN Sturdy
BAN Skill Link
BAN Substitute
UNBAN Mega Beedrill
UNBAN Harvest
tl;dr: yes
