These two bans make no sense to me from a tiering or balance perspective, and I view these bans as bad tiering ngl. Keldeo has been in the meta barely two weeks, it has barely been brought during ommpl (where it wasn't shown to be broken), has not been suffocating the ladder, and is easily handled by competent team structures. If your only counterplay to keld is desolate land Heatran, yea it's gonna suck. Mons such as primarina, iron moth, alo, apple, clod, lati, woger, and moltres all check keld fine, and these are just what I can think of off the top of my head. There wasn't even time to see its full potential in the meta/what counterplay naturally develops.
The meowscarada one also makes no sense, if a team is losing to a choice band mon that isn't even damage amp because their only counterplay to a physical mon is fluffy, guess what, that is a bad team comp! Long reach knock doesn't even do 50 to a corv if it has an item, which I think would be a baseline consideration for if a physical mon is 'broken'. Just like in regular AAA u need multiple ways of handling contact/non-contact physical threats. If anything I'm surprised something like mamo isn't being looked at before meow, since it forces random ground immune ice resists or stamina.
Also, there is no transparency in these posts, who voted for what? Was this a close vote? Was there discussion for suspect tests (which you can do because of perma-ladder now)? There wasn't even a survey or anything to discuss these bans. I just find it weird that these two mons have been singled out because one was recently re-added (not giving time for the meta to develop), and a new mid set has started seeing usage (again, not giving time for the meta to develop). I would like the council to reconsider this tiering action.
Discussed this with the council, and I feel like sharing my response here since I had Betticus IV in mind as a reader when I was writing it. Close your eyes if you're not named Betticus IV or something.
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Betticus comes from a policy-based perspective, whilst I'm arguing more from an abundance-based tiering pov. So I want to clarify that naturally err to freeing stuff even if it's broken and then cleaning things up in one big sweep. Unrelated, but I have an auspicious statue of Kokoloko on my bedside table. With that being said, I don't agree with their Keldeo take because Keldeo was something I intended to vote to test for the duration of the spotlight ladder because I wanted to explore it beyond theory building. I conceded it was broken from the start and that I would ban it in a future vote [once I had my evidence]. The condition for allowing it was to help ground any reasoning for a ban, since I didn't really have a strong argument [not to unban] it following the Tinted Lens nuke. I took away my vote, though, because after careful consideration, I believed the pro-unban argument had some rationale to it and over time I felt more ambivalent abt banning it.
However, I do want to stress two things from my perspective:
1) We definitely need tallies of which council members are voting on things. It's transparency, but it's also good admin. For reference, I am part of councils where virtually all the voting slates (like 20 of em) are available in the sheets. Hyperbolically speaking, we have enough slates and votes to the point where you could probably predict how each member would vote based on metagame state and voting slates alone.
2) I think the council here is generally very skittish abt stuff that doesn't have hard counters. For Mrs Crisis, it's because she comes from Gen 8 PokeAAA/OMMs where everything is the fucking Congress of Vienna and everything must have checks und balance. Sleepyfwog and Lavendar are relatively new council members and are under Ms Crisis' tutelage. I've been on showdown since gen 6, challenging my irl friend to showdown gamer deathmatches, but I really cut my teeth in Gen 7 ala Ash Gren and Magearna metagame. My habitus is Ash Gren clicking h pumps in the rain or Mega Zam Lele spamming Psychic moves, and ur only check is AV Magearna.
For me [to clarify my position on this vote], I prefer *counterplay* rather than having counters per se. Let's take another example: Gen 7 Kyurem Black. That mon has no hard counters, and anyone who tells you that either hasn't played Gen 7 or has never faced hidden power fire on ladder/tour. However, there's a lot of mid-grounds and positioning options you have to deduce the KyuB set, and there's often enough offensive counterplay to punish it. I feel the same way with Meowscarada, and while yes, it does promote samey answers as sleepyfwog just mentioned [in council chat], but I wouldn't mind that trade for something that I find very consistent, and I know for a fact Betticus IV
definitely wouldn't mind because they're an AAA player and they're after consistency in builder (so it's a
win-win for them). It's also why I feel a little more strongly towards Meowscarada than I did towards Keldeo, because in my mind it's kind of a Gen 7 Magearna in that I like its ability to be an offensive glue and [in pokeaaa it is] a solid revenge-killer-cum-pivot. I really miss scarf roaring moon for a similar reason.
Plan forward:
* Tighter admin regarding voting results with public slates. Having a Google sheet for council's sake, and a post compiling the tiering decisions made, should be sufficient.
* Have an explainer post by council members (mainly Ms Crisis, but others can contribute) on the rationale for the bans
Keldeo and Meowscarada will be unbanned for the time being. 