Following NDOU’s recent suspect on Terstalization and the ongoing tournament, the council has deemed it necessary to have another vote regarding any additional points of concern.
Having reached a supermajority on the following, Drought, Drizzle, and Hoopa-Unbound will be banned from National Dex UU, effective immediately.
---
Drought / Drizzle 
Weather has recently seen a huge surge in popularity, owing to trends such as the return of Torkoal for Sun and removal of Pokemon like Dondozo and Kyurem that were overall problematic for Rain to go up against respectively, on top of a plethora of threatening wallbreakers and sweepers now able to join it down in a UU setting. Among the biggest threats include Venusaur, Swords Dance Blaziken, and Choice Band Victini on Sun, while Rain also employs the full use of Swift Swimmers such as Barraskewda, Floatzel, Kingdra, and even the newly released Basculegion forms to terrifying effect, even disregarding the variety stemming from their own offensive capabilities, especially when Terastalized. Many of the best resists to these weather-boosted attackers can easily find themselves overwhelmed in return, while offensively-oriented Pokemon can struggle similarly with the prevalence of speed-boosting sweepers and inability to safely switch in for the most part.
However, it has also been pointed out that regarding select traits said weather abusers bring to the metagame on their own, notably Venusaur’s Mega Counterpart being an important defensive presence in its own right, along with Victini’s and Blaziken’s sweeping capabilities outside of Sun, thus presenting a dilemma which the council has been burdened to resolve — either remove a significant portion of the mentioned abusers, for which the queue for doing so would be considered unreasonable, while not detracting from the concept of boosted weather attacks being fundamentally unhealthy for the tier – or banning the respective weather rocks, which fails to account for the lack of defensive security teams can struggle to work around as a whole, especially with the huge number of pivots in the tier that can easily slot onto these teamstyles to help maximize their wallbreaking opportunities regardless. With all of this mind, the council has ultimately decided that the best course of action is to ban the weather abilities outright.
Hoopa-Unbound Boasting staggering offenses and coverage to its name, Hoopa-Unbound quickly reestablished itself as one of the most dangerous wallbreakers around. The combination of base 160/170 attacking stats and STAB moves, often accompanied by boosting items like Life Orb and Choice Band or Specs, made it downright impossible to handle defensively on both fronts and capable of obliterating any answer with minimal effort involved during its brief tenure in the tier.
Although Hoopa-Unbound may come with a few flaws that are far from desirable on the surface level, they are also worth looking into individually to contextualize its effect on the metagame in practice; Base 80 speed might not be perfect offensively, but is still more than enough to outrun and threaten common Pokemon around the mid-range, such as most Tapu Fini variants, Aegislash, and Buzzwole -- on the flip side, the plethora of VoltTurn support in conjunction with its high special defense also makes it relatively easy for Hoopa-Unbound to get onto the field and find opportunties, even being able to live attacks such as Draco Meteors from Latios and Moonblasts from Tapu Fini and Clefable in a pinch -- for which the effort to pull this off has since become more noticeable with the ban of Weavile, leaving us with only slower options in Tyranitar and the chance Bisharp to Pursuit trap choice-locked variants, provided that the opposing Hoopa has not already Tricked away its item to stare them down with a potential OHKO from a Fighting move, while being able to ruin several otherwise valid checks like Ting-Lu and Mandibuzz in the process. Worse still, Substitute + Z-Move variants have also seen use to get around the aforementioned issues more reliably, taking advantage of teams relying on maneuvering around said choice-locks or revenge killing attempts, and still being plenty strong offensively due to Hoopa-Unbound’s coverage against frailer targets and ability to threaten a one-time nuke in return.
The full voting list can be found here:
| Drought | Drizzle | |
| Arishem | Quickban | Quickban |
| sanguine | Abstain | Abstain |
| MudkipBeans | Quickban | Quickban |
| Niadev | Quickban | Quickban |
| Pubo | Quickban | Quickban |
| Ryuji | Quickban | Quickban |
| Outcome | Banned | Banned |
In addition, we voted on the following Pokemon.
| Enamorus | Hoopa-Unbound | Aegislash | Sableye-Mega | Blaziken | |
| Arishem | Suspect (1) | Suspect (2) | Suspect (3) | Do Not Ban | Do Not Ban |
| sanguine | Abstain | Abstain | Abstain | Abstain | Abstain |
| MudkipBeans | Suspect (1) | Quickban | Suspect (2) | Suspect (3) | Do Not Ban |
| Niadev | Suspect (1) | Quickban | Suspect (2) | Suspect | Abstain |
| Pubo | Suspect (2) | Quickban | Suspect (1) | Suspect (3) | Do Not Ban |
| Ryuji | Quickban | Quickban | Suspect | abstain | Quickban |
| Outcome | Suspect (1) | Banned | Suspect (2) | Suspect (3) | no action= |
Regarding the Terastalization mechanic — it has also become a major discussion on the chopping block, and as the gates have recently opened to potentially trial it in lower tiers, we are expecting to conduct a survey shortly after to assess how people feel about this decision, so stay tuned.
Good luck to anyone still participating in the Open, tagging Kris to implement as always.