Why Substitute should be banned:
Apologies for the long post – read just the bolded lines and summary at the end for the main argument.
First let me give a big thanks for all the work
Whitephoenixace and other contributors have put into Trademarked. It's a meta with a unique feel to it that I really appreciate that the TLs are trying to preserve as best they can. But Substitute really needs to go, and action needs to be taken sooner rather than later if the meta is going to have time to evolve to post-Sub play before the month is over.
Here are the main reasons why I think it should be banned:
1. It's more overpowered than people are giving it credit for because it is low risk/high reward
What makes Substitute a strong move? I see a lot of people arguing that Substitute is powerful because of its many strong abusers and the fact that it allows you to put opponents in checkmate solutions where they lack effective counterplay. I think that this is only half of the story. The real strength of Substitute is how
safe it is – that is, how little can go wrong by switching in a Substitute user in on a given turn. Put another way, people have been extensively analyzing the rewards of using Substitute, but the right way to gauge the strength of a move is in terms of the
risk/reward, and Substitute is by far the move with the most skewed risk/reward.
To demonstrate this point, let's compare Sub to moves with healthier risk/reward ratios. A move with a healthy risk/reward is Shell Smash. The reward of getting a Shell Smash user in safely is pretty high – a mon with +2 in every offensive stat can do some heavy damage. But getting a Shell Smash user in play is difficult due to defense drops and status conditions and the threat of your opponent attacking, and you also have to worry about countersweeps from Transform or Heart Swap. High risk, high reward.
Will-O-Wisp is also balanced, with less extreme payoff. The reward for Wisping successfully is burning an enemy mon – useful, but usually not something that will lead to KOs. Thanks to the attack drop when burning, the risk involved in switching to a Wisp mon is lessened. Low risk, low-ish reward.
All this is turned on its head when we look at Substitute. The reward of using Substitute successfully is
greater than that of using Shell Smash, since a Sub user with setup moves can use a free turn generated by Substitute to choose between setting up and going for direct damage. The risk involved in using Substitute is also
less than that of using Will-O-Wisp, since the damage that can be done to a Sub user is capped under most normal conditions at 25% + hazards.
The consequence of this is that
Substitute as an ability is conceptually broken. Substitute's power does not depend which Substitute abusers are effective in a given meta, nor on whether auxiliary strategies like Wish passing are banned or not – Substitute is an outlier in terms of risk/reward and this is a fact of the Trademarked OM.
2. It leads to linear, flowcharty gameplay and games may be determined by whose Substitute user has the better matchup
There have always been moves and abilities with low risk and high reward that define metagames, either for better or for worse. Stealth Rock and Scald are 2 examples of moves that changed competitive mons, but while SR punished passivity and promoted aggressive gameplay, Scald led to prolonged matches and rewarded passive play. How does Substitute shape the Trademarked metagame?
As a player who's laddered and spectated a fair amount, I feel qualified in saying that Trademarked is a metagame where your gameplan is determined by your Sub user's matchup versus your opponent's team and their Sub user's matchup versus yours. Let me illustrate my point with some replays.
Replay 1:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7trademarked-904666827
In this game,
sketchy ecchi autopilots to victory, switching in Heatran safely using momentum moves and items and using Protect to scout the opponent's counterplay. Milkito's Substitute user, being slow outside of Trick Room, was never able to get off the ground. Almost all of sketchy ecchi's turns were either spent using Protect, U-turn, switching into Sub Tran, or attacking something with Sub Tran, indicating that his strategy revolved heavily around exploiting his Substitute user.
Replay 2:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7trademarked-907643159
In this game,
Ktütverde gets the upper hand because he is able to use his Substitute mon to get kills while crippling his opponent's Sub mon. Tyranitar is able to come in on resisted hits and get free kills with Pursuit and Focus Punch. Using Substitute to guarantee a Pursuit trap is an idea also found in
Imperator Romanum's team.
Replay 3:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7trademarked-910584133
This agonizing and protracted slog of a match is a result of Chansey + Buzzwole vs Chansey + Buzzwole. With neither side able to break through or wear down the opposing Substitute user, the game grinds to a halt. In the end it's the Buzzwole that knows Roost that is able to break the Buzzwole that does not (after 150+ turns).
These replays were not cherry-picked; they were the first ones I could get my hands on. This is the state of the metagame. Personally I think it's a shame that a meta like Trademarked – where the attraction is the wide variety of sets possible and the unpredictability of gameplay – can be solved by using a strategy designed to minimize risk.
3. Banning Substitute (and Wish) would make the tier less matchup-reliant and more skill-reliant
Substitute may be the most powerful thing right now, but it exists in an ecosystem where if it were to be removed, something else would take its place and shape the tier around it. What would happen if Substitute were banned, and would it change the tier for the better?
Like anyone else, I can only speculate about whether the tier would be more or less fun with Substitute gone, but as a general rule, I think we should strive for a balanced tier. As it currently stands, there is little room to outplay a Substitute user with good matchup against you, and this makes for a frustrating gameplay experience. In dozens of games I have observed a pattern where if I am winning I rarely have to double or predict, and if I am losing there is little chance to turn the battle around.
It may be the case that the next best move is Wish, and that a tier without Substitute would be a semi-stall funfest leading to 1000 turn battles. Independently of Substitute being overpowered, I think that Wish is a risk/reward outlier as well, and I would not mind seeing it banned either. I believe that
banning Substitute and Wish will make safe pivoting less of a dominant strategy and lead to a tier where piloting one's win conditions to victory is less straightforward than it currently is.
On a closing note, I think the tier has gotten stale. There are only so many ways to abuse Sub or counter Sub and I'm running out of ideas and desire to play. I think we should view a Substitute ban as an opportunity to start fresh and figure out the tier again. Banning Sub may lead to a meta dominated by TR, or spikestack, or stall – who knows. But isn't the excitement of adapting to a new meta the reason why we play OMs in the first place? I think a Substitute ban would be a welcome change of pace.
TLDR: Substitute is overpowered due to being low risk/high reward and warps the tier to the point that there is little room to outplay a Substitute user with matchup advantage over you. Banning Substitute would make the tier more skill-intensive and hopefully lead to a balanced and more interesting tier.
