Chou Toshio
Shouldn't we have banned the rest of the OU metagame when we banned chomp if it's a central cog that shapes our expectations?
I know it's a stupid question but I just don't really understand what you're getting at, I've never felt the need to compare any pokemon to Garchomp.
I never really considered any pokemon to be of such relevance..
Not necessarily. I mean, guess who DPP's central cog is/was? Salamence-- and it's banned.
But up until its ban at the VERY END of DPP's time as primary metagame, Salamence pretty much set the gold standard for power. Its Speed tier was the one to which all others compared themselves. Its bulk with intimidate and inability to be one shot by Bullet Punch was a shaping factor in the meta-- and of course, its POWER defined the standard of offensive strength in DPP.
And yet, if there had been viability rankings in DPP OU, Salamence never would have been S rank. It could easily be worn down by SR and LO. Its DD sets could be revenge killed with Scizor reliably. Its mixed sets set a standard for wallbreakers, but were incredibly prediction reliant. Still, Salamence was a consistent and powerful performing A+ offensive poke, and pushed the envelope on the standards for all other pokes. As long as Salamence was there, DPP's metagame would always be significantly more offensively, with a significantly higher standard of power.
Ultimately, DPP's competitive players decided that that higher standard was not what they wanted for the meta, and opted to ban Salamence even though no one thought it broken, unbeatable, or even the best Pokemon in the tier. Salamence simply shaped the tier in a way that people didn't like or want.
With Scizor or Gyarados as the meta's central cog, the metagame became a lot more tame.
However, I think even having been banned, Salamence's role as a central cog had a huge influence on the metagame throughout the course of DPP, and was a big part in shaping the meta just as how Garchomp has done in BW. I think you can even see the big gaps in generational strength just by comparing their central cogs-- Raikou in ADV --> Salamence in DPP --> Garchomp in BW.
tl;dr-- As a consistent performer that's considered not broken, the central cog has a big influential role on the standard of power in a meta. If you ban it, you significantly lower the overall standard of power. Sometimes though, that's something players want for the metagame. Even BW might receive less complaints if the metagame's power was reared into the point that Garchomp's level of power (without Sand Veil) was borderline considerable for a ban (the way Salamence's was at the end of DPP).
