Jorgen
World's Strongest Fairy
This is the kind of topic that gets brought up often. I apologize for bringing it up for the 928751908427th time, but there's a good reason it gets as much discussion as it does: Snorlax is broken as hell. Hopefully I'm a credible enough GSCer for this to get attention and not just be shoved aside.
I used to support Snorlax's existence in GSC because, hey, "good players" know how to deal with it, and it seems to enable offense in a generation generally derided for being "all stall". But the more I think of it, the more bullshit that seems. Snorlax doesn't just enable offense, it instantly wrests control of matches. It forces you to play passively against it, so even if it doesn't outright get the advantage, at worst it forces drawish situations. AT WORST. Most mons at least have some bad matchups, but Snorlax literally can manhandle anything GSC can throw at it. The metagame is so centered around Snorlax that it's ridiculous; that people regularly run 2 checks to it and still get their faces smashed by it, that Growl Miltank is the standard mostly to stall out Fire Blast Curselax, that Explosion is the only "reliable" way to get counterplay against Lax should all be pretty good evidence of that, and of course that's just the tip of the iceberg. The way it limits the moves you can make is criminal, and it's severely detrimental to the accessibility of GSC.
Of course, Snorlax does define offense in GSC, which might seem like a good thing. But it's not just because he's one of the few things that can tank enough hits to set up. It's also because of what he does to mess up most other offensive Pokemon. Most defensive Pokemon are forced out by something, but not Lax once he gets in. He just pressures the opponent into switching in something like Skarm that does little more than not die to Lax. Honestly, without Snorlax, teams lose their Check to Everything and battles are probably more likely to become more dynamic than they are to become more stallish, in all honesty. One of the main reasons people consider using stall tactics, after all, is because, as aforementioned, there's really no other way to reliably deal with Snorlax but to stall it. Granted, the Drum set prevents people from trying to get TOO stally, but that gets into another aspect of GSC: there's literally no reason not to use Snorlax, and that stifles creativity way too much (outside of using wacky new sets for SNORLAX, or using a new Special Sweeper like Vaporeon that can beat SNORLAX... sometimes).
I don't have time to make an even more elaborate post right now, but suffice to say that I no longer believe Snorlax's super-centralizing influence on GSC is acceptable. It just makes teambuilding, playing, everything so... dumb. Now, with Snorlax gone, what would happen to the metagame? Would Electrics rule the day? Would it become more geared toward stall? Those are possibilities, but the likelihood and severity of those possibilities is probably trumped up and colored by a desire to rationalize the tendency to be conservative when it comes to making old-gen tier changes (which I normally favor, by-the-by). I implore people who know GSC, though, to try to look past that conservatism in this case and evaluate whether or not a Snorlax ban would actually be a good idea.
I used to support Snorlax's existence in GSC because, hey, "good players" know how to deal with it, and it seems to enable offense in a generation generally derided for being "all stall". But the more I think of it, the more bullshit that seems. Snorlax doesn't just enable offense, it instantly wrests control of matches. It forces you to play passively against it, so even if it doesn't outright get the advantage, at worst it forces drawish situations. AT WORST. Most mons at least have some bad matchups, but Snorlax literally can manhandle anything GSC can throw at it. The metagame is so centered around Snorlax that it's ridiculous; that people regularly run 2 checks to it and still get their faces smashed by it, that Growl Miltank is the standard mostly to stall out Fire Blast Curselax, that Explosion is the only "reliable" way to get counterplay against Lax should all be pretty good evidence of that, and of course that's just the tip of the iceberg. The way it limits the moves you can make is criminal, and it's severely detrimental to the accessibility of GSC.
Of course, Snorlax does define offense in GSC, which might seem like a good thing. But it's not just because he's one of the few things that can tank enough hits to set up. It's also because of what he does to mess up most other offensive Pokemon. Most defensive Pokemon are forced out by something, but not Lax once he gets in. He just pressures the opponent into switching in something like Skarm that does little more than not die to Lax. Honestly, without Snorlax, teams lose their Check to Everything and battles are probably more likely to become more dynamic than they are to become more stallish, in all honesty. One of the main reasons people consider using stall tactics, after all, is because, as aforementioned, there's really no other way to reliably deal with Snorlax but to stall it. Granted, the Drum set prevents people from trying to get TOO stally, but that gets into another aspect of GSC: there's literally no reason not to use Snorlax, and that stifles creativity way too much (outside of using wacky new sets for SNORLAX, or using a new Special Sweeper like Vaporeon that can beat SNORLAX... sometimes).
I don't have time to make an even more elaborate post right now, but suffice to say that I no longer believe Snorlax's super-centralizing influence on GSC is acceptable. It just makes teambuilding, playing, everything so... dumb. Now, with Snorlax gone, what would happen to the metagame? Would Electrics rule the day? Would it become more geared toward stall? Those are possibilities, but the likelihood and severity of those possibilities is probably trumped up and colored by a desire to rationalize the tendency to be conservative when it comes to making old-gen tier changes (which I normally favor, by-the-by). I implore people who know GSC, though, to try to look past that conservatism in this case and evaluate whether or not a Snorlax ban would actually be a good idea.