Why do people want to ban more and more things?

[Matthew]

I'm not one to judge on most cases, but it seems that more and more people want to ban more and more things. I rarely make posts on Stark(barring Warstories) for fear of them not belonging here, or that they're no intelligent enough. This is getting out of hand though. Over the past few months I've seen things saying "Ban Stealth Rocks, Ban Shaymin-S, Ban this, Ban that, Ban Outrage for cheese and crackers sake!"

People say "we should ban Stealth Rocks to open up the Metagame for new pokemon, like Charizard, Moltres and Articuno!" Why? What significance would they have in the OU game? Moltres could be considered an exception to these three, but it doesn't seem like any of them would have much effect and be bumped down to BL. Now, have we even considered what that would actually do to the metagame? Stealth Rocks keeps things like SpecsMence from always switching in to deal quite a bit of damage to a team. It also limits Gyarados's sweeping potential (we can all agree that he is a deadly sweeper). "Stealth Rocks is only countered by Taunt and Rapid Spin! Rapid Spin is countered by Ghosts! You can't Taunt Azelf!" This is something that I see frequently. Seven Deadly Sins signature comes in on this point

Because apparently 3 layers of Spikes, 2 layers of Toxic Spikes and 1 layer of Stealth Rocks are up whenever I suggest a Garchomp counter. Also a sandstorm is brewing and Garchomp has the following moveset : Draco Meteor/Fire Blast/Outrage/Swords Dance/Earthquake/Dragon Claw/Fire Fang/Crunch/Stone Edge.

I could say Salamence is broken because Dragon + Fire + Ground is a completely unresisted type combination and with Dragon Dance and a Bulky Water with Salamence is 100% Uber. Does that mean he's Uber? God no, it just means that if someone is forced to have a counter they just want to get rid of it to free up their team of a pokemon.

This brings me to my next point, when should we classify something as Uber? Uber is something that means it has counters, but the counters fail some of the time. Garchomp is an example, it required you to use TWO fast pokemon that have an Ice attack to get it out of the game. Your opponent could see the ice attacks coming from a mile away and switch to his counter for that. Is Garchomp broken because he require two pokemon to take him down? What if one of those two pokemon die unfortunatly then what does that leave you with? An incredible sweeper who can OH-2HKO your entire team. I would say that Garchomp was broken. Shaymin-s, the recent pokemon to get voted to Ubers, wasn't what we'd define as broken, was broken to some degree, but not enough to get it bumped to Ubers. People, most likely, had a bias against Shaymin-s because they lost a game due to "h4x" or because "it creates luck in the game". Luck is a two sided coin my friend. At one point their's will run out and you can sweep. That is beside the point I guess since Shaymin-s's counters indeed where counters. Zapdos could switch into Shaymin-s with relitive ease, as could Heatran since people loved to exploit Seed Flare and Air Slash, except when Timid ScarfTran comes about. If Shaymin-s is "broken" because her ability causes an effect, then lets just ban all abilities.

The people who continually bring up how Stealth Rocks and Shaymin-s is broken because of reasons that they pull out of no where are really only wanting to ban it since they have a personal bias against it, not because they've reasearched it. So really if you're wanting to ban Stealth Rocks because "it'll open up the Metagame for three or four new pokemon" and you wanted Shaymin-s banned because "Seed Flare and Air Slash fucked me over" then that's not good reasoning. It's you carrying a personal bias against what you think is a "suspect".

... how'd I do?

 

[Darkerkrai]

Generally, they don't want to adapt to the newer changes in 4th gen and Platinum mainly because of that big, muscley armed land shark. With Shaymin-s people held personal grudges against it for being haxed out by one. I've been beaten by a Thunder Wave/Air Slash Togekiss but that only pursuaded me to start carrying Ground types and Substitute/Lum Berry users. When I was beaten by Shaymin-s for the first time, it only pursuaded me to carry a support Dragonite to make a reliable switch in to it.

Stealth Rock is only a "suspect" in the eyes of those who want games to last as long as possible or end quickly while their powerhouses can switch in and out as many times as they want whereas people who don't consider Stealth Rock bad just use it as a way to keep those powerhouses at bay.

Personally, I think that most of the community who supports bans on multiple things want to use the opposite of Smogon's goal, rather than keep the bans to a minimum, they want to weed everything out and keep the things that aren't considered broken next thing ya' know, things like Scizor will be tested >_>.

 

[Articanus]

why not if it makes the game more fun? banning Garchomp did just that, so I didn't see a problem in banning it. Not that I ever had a problem with it, just the game I found after it's banning turned to be more fun than with it

 

[umbarsc]

you wanted Shaymin-s banned because "Seed Flare and Air Slash fucked me over" then that's not good reasoning. It's you carrying a personal bias against what you think is a "suspect".

I could say the same about OHKOs. "Wah wah Sheer Cold hit me twice and killed two Pokemon". OHKOs are unlikely to be effective most of the time, and are extremely inconsistent, but are banned anyways because it introduces an unecessary element of luck. I feel that that is the greatest justification for Shaymin-S ban.

or because "it creates luck in the game".

As a community, we have strived to eliminate unnecessary luck from the game. We banned Evasion moves and OHKO moves for this reason. Once you introduce luck to the game, you make a game less competitive, less strategic, and to competitive gamers, less fun. Of course, we're still playing Pokemon, and some luck we can't control, and it makes Pokemon quirky. However, the luck we can reasonably control without changing the fundamentals of the game should be stopped as much as possible.

Garchomp is an example, it required you to use TWO fast pokemon that have an Ice attack to get it out of the game.

No it didn't.

Your opponent could see the ice attacks coming from a mile away and switch to his counter for that.

Congratulations, you just stopped Garchomp.

What if one of those two pokemon die unfortunatly then what does that leave you with? An incredible sweeper who can OH-2HKO your entire team.

If it can strike first, that is. 102 is by no means slow, but with Scarf users and plenty of OU users above 333 Speed, you could still revenge-kill it, assuming you hit through Sand Veil. And though he has superb defenses for a sweeper, without investment they won't be standing up to tough hits from revenge-killers.

The main similarity between Garchomp's and Shaymin-S' bans were luck. Many complained about Sand Veil, which was a big factor in Garchomp being banned. I must admit that Garchomp having Sand Veil made me consider Garchomp being banned.

 

[Setrack]

people should apply the arguments they use for banning arbitrary pokemon for other pokemon. you dont hear people complaining about tyranitar being uber because you are forced to carry swampert or whatever. (like the way you are apparently forced to carry garchomp counters)

also by the way you talk about "h4x" i assume you want to also unban OHKOs and EVASION moves.

 

[Droideka88]

Shaymin-s, the recent pokemon to get voted to Ubers, wasn't what we'd define as broken was broken to some degree, but not enough to get it bumped to Ubers. People, most likely, had a bias against Shaymin-s because they lost a game due to "h4x" or because "it creates luck in the game".

THis is the exact trap that everyone is unwilling to get out of or escape. No change in how Smogon sets up tiers, which affects the metagame and our decisions in what gets ban.

I've been insisting since day 1 (since D/P because I am not a veteran member of Smogon) that something needs to universally change besides banning stuff. Banning small things like Garchomp, Shaymin-S, Deoxys, SR, is not going to accomplish anything in the long run. We'll soon end up with so many banned stuff that we'll all ask ourselves how can reserve those banned stuff for something besides Uber.

You yourself are skeptical of Shaymin-S's fate because at one hand you thought it had qualities of being...but on the other hand, your guts told you it was OU. I think the time for a truce between Uber and OU needs to take effect.

My friend, I propose to you and the rest of the community a new tier that will act as a truce between OU and Semi-uber....Semi-uber people. Think of Semi-ubers including the top tier OU and at the same time, the low tier Ubers. Think of Warcraft III Dota, where you have hero classes command lower beings into battle. If in a Pokemon battle, one chooses to use a Semi-uber, then it is only honorable that the other user use 1 or bravely fight with other standard OU and lower tier beings.

What if Semi-ubers responded to the metagame as being the savior for the recent controversial decisions Smogon desperately made. This would definitvely benefit pokemon like Shaymin-S, Deoxys-S, Garchomp, Scizor, etc or even broken moves like Stealth Rock...who could use the benefit of escaping or becoming the prisoncell of Uberness.

If we keep using repetitive, traditional, and outdated arguments like "Uber is the ban for OU", "power [which may account for how broken a pokemon is] has nothing to do with how a pokemon is placed in tiers", and "OU is the standard of competitively playing", then we'll never escape our trap, which is to let Pokemon metagame be changed through the existance of the current tiers.

"Smogon is a Pokémon website and community specializing in the art of
competitive battling."

Smogon itself has recently lost its main role in making Pokemon a competitive game. That's my opinion and I'm sure others like Gen Empoleon see that too.

P.S. Well said Empoleon.

why not if it makes the game more fun? banning Garchomp did just that, so I didn't see a problem in banning it.

Yes but that was BEFORE Platinum came out and some Pokemon benefited from having Move tutors. Remember that.

 

[Syberia]

people should apply the arguments they use for banning arbitrary pokemon for other pokemon. you dont hear people complaining about tyranitar being uber because you are forced to carry swampert or whatever. (like the way you are apparently forced to carry garchomp counters)

Tyranitar has 6 weaknesses, poor speed, and no Swords Dance. Garchomp has 2 weaknesses (one, if you consider all users of Dragon-type moves besides other Garchomps are slower and will be killed first), the ability to avoid that weakness with Yache Berrry, and great defenses to survive anything he isn't weak to, great speed, an ability that fucks over anything no matter how much of a perfect counter/revenge killer they are 20% of the time, and Swords Dance.

"Scizor forces people to carry a counter, so we should ban it." Garchomp was nothing like the situation you're describing.

 

[Matthew]

also by the way you talk about "h4x" i assume you want to also unban OHKOs and EVASION moves.

Evasion is not the same as Shaymin-s using Air Slash to flinch you opponent. Evasion is making yourself almost impossible to hit and you can hit back equally as hard. If we unbanned Evasion clause then the Metagame would evolve into nothing but pokemon use Double Team so they can avoid getting hit make battles go on for ever.

OHKO's are iffy while we're on that. There are certain OHKO's the don't effect certain types, like Fissure and Flying types. Though most would need to carry a pokemon with the ability Sturdy just incase that the odd chance the move would hit. I would say that it would deserve testing over all, can't really be certain at this moment Setrack.

 

[cim]

I fucking love you, General Empoleon.

There's an intrinsic "new thing bias" in most voters, and no one ever addresses it but I'm pretty certain it's there. People use terms they pick up by glancing at smarter members (not me, I'm guilty of what Im describing) like "overcentralization", then twist their meaning into some twisted, convulted reason that essentially boils down to "I had to change my team." People hate change.

I've said it a billion times. If any current powerful OU Pokémon (Tyranitar, Scizor, Salamence, hell even Gyarados) were dropped into the emtagame for a one month test where it was labelled as a "suspect" by everyone and people needed a specific check for it, then they will vote Uber. Regardless that dozens of Pokémon require checks, it's only the new ones that people notice and thus complain about.

People also want to ban things they don't like.

TL;DR: General Empoleon gets better every day.

 

[Bourbon]

general empoleon, you're so right.

It's really stupid that people will not adapt to changes to the game. When a new threat comes along, be it a great new set idea, or a new pokemon altogether, people refuse to adapt. You actually need to change your team occasionally to keep up with new threats in the game.

Another thing people refuse to acknowledge is that some Pokemon do need counters. If you have a team of Azelf, Scizor, Swampert, Tyranitar, Rotom, and Blissey, you'll get swept by Swords Dance Lucario all the time. Instead of freaking out and saying "lets ban lucario" you should scarf your Rotom-H and get less fighting weak pokemon. Same with Gyarados, Salamence, and more. If you don't have a Gyarados counter or revenge killer, it will sweep you. If you don't have a Salamence counter, it will sweep you. It's just infuriating seeing all these people wanting to ban stuff they can't deal with.

 

[lilyhollow]

weren't you one of the guys who wanted people to stop using that DualScreen -> Mew strat in Ubers? >_>


well anyway, I more or less agree with you and definitely Chris is me, though I really think the idea of being "biased against new things" isn't exclusive to "bad" or "easily-influenced" players. If you look at Advance Celebi, there were plenty (or maybe just "several" if my memory fails me, but either way) of top players who would have rebanned it in a heartbeat if given the chance. And it's not like there weren't great players who voted Skymin Uber based on what I'd personally call faulty reasoning.


I think we're definitely looking at this being an issue with any Suspect that starts off Uber (or Skymin). Imagine that we just left Skymin alone for a few months, and eventually its usage dropped to, say, Jirachi's, Togekiss', or below. Honestly, what could anybody have even said at that point? Considering the relatively low usage Skymin had during its own test, I have to believe that things would be very different had we let the metagame settle for a couple months before jumping to conclusions (and that isn't to say that I don't understand why that conclusion had to be made, given the system we're working with)

This is, I think, one of the fundamental issues with the Suspect Test in its current form, because we're basically automatically labeling anything that started Uber (based on almost nothing, might I add) as an "outsider" to the "real" standard metagame. It's this sort of attitude that might drive someone to vote Latios into Ubers for making it "too easy to abuse the dragon type," even if Latios ended up less effective than Salamence overall, and was used less.


That said, I'm not terribly concerned when it comes to suspects that aren't "Uber by default." Skymin was a sort of exception, but I think if we already have plenty of prior experience with something such as Stealth Rock (or Garchomp, whose vote was actually surprisingly "close" in my opinion), the likelihood that we'll keep it in the game is really good unless it's clearly broken. I would be surprised to see Stealth Rock banned, but if it did I'd attribute that to people now supporting something closer to a "let's make the best metagame possible" view, which I kind of hope we can get over somehow, as I find it pretty ridiculous.

 

[Colonel M]

why not if it makes the game more fun? banning Garchomp did just that, so I didn't see a problem in banning it. Not that I ever had a problem with it, just the game I found after it's banning turned to be more fun than with it

You know, I'm not ragging on you Articanus. Rather, this is the mentality that many players have...

...and that could pose as a problem.

Here, I disagree that banning Garchomp made the game more fun. Actually, you could say it made it slightly worse. Well, to me anyway. In the beginning I agreed that banning Garchomp allowed more Pokemon to see the light of day. Unforunately it felt only as a short-term solution.

After a while, I had a strange feeling the bannings were more like "witch hunts". And I don't even need to sit here and prove it, simply look at the Deoxys-S and Shaymin-S polls. That alone made me think hard about a lot of things. Did Garchomp, despite seemingly powerful, offer a weird "balance" to the metagame? I had this feeling that people always looked at Garchomp in the weirdest of ways. One, they considered Chain Chomp wrecking its counters (granted, it does); however, I could argue Salamence does that better any day (especially with a slightly higher Attack stat and an impressive 110 SpA stat). This is kind of how the whole thing started. Due to this set, it could beat anything yadayada.

The next thing to think about was its counters. According to people, it was nonexistant. Then the argument came in "if it requires two counters, it should simply be banned." Really? Could I argue about other Pokemon, such as Infernape, Lucario, Gengar, and many, MANY other Pokemon that have questionable switch-ins? I'll even bring some of the borderline ones such as Tyranitar and Rotom-Appliance to the mix. Blissey as a Gengar counter? What about Trick fucking up most of its abilities while annihilating everything else with STAB Shadow Ball and Focus Blast alone? Lucario doesn't really have true counters, despite what many think. Choice Specs and Swords Dance Lucario alone require seperate counters. Tyranitar has Hariyama and Machamp; however, the latter doesn't like Choice Band Aqua Tails. An interesting fact: Choice Band Tyranitar can 2HKO at the very least anything on an Obi Stall team with Aqua Tail / Stone Edge / Crunch / Pursuit (and Pursuit is the one move that could be ommitted for something such as Earthquake).

Now Sandstorm and Sand Veil have also become a devestating combo, offering more to luck. And this is where I will use something similair for an argument: Serene Grace. Doesn't this ability also promote luck? What about Snow Cloak? That gets pretty annoying too. Again, I find this argument very flawed as far as Sand Veil being the reason to ban this thing.

Finally we hit Yache Berry. Okay, I'll admit myself that it's quite a good option for Garchomp. But what about the forgotten SubSalac Chomp? I find this x100 more threatening as it gets a free Swords Dance plus has a chance of +1 Speed, annihilating everything in its path late-game.

So for those that are saying tl;dr, I'll sum it up for you. The reasons that Garchomp was "banned" IMO were as follows:

- Overcentralisation
- Yache Berry
- Consideration of a somewhat "gimmicky" set (Chain Chomp)
- Sand Veil
- Has the ability to hurt things in the late-game, just like everything else
- Lack of Counters
- Break through Stall (I've felt someone would use this as an example, and I find it a little horrible of an argument myself)

And my opinion is this: the first one is the only "good" argument in here. It is, by any competitive standards, the goal to win that strives people to use something such as Garchomp. It was an effective late-game sweeper and I've always felt that with "checks" instead of "counters", Garchomp could be handled. With Platinum, a lot of things have also been brought to the table. If Shaymin-S and Lati@s were allowed, I think Garchomp would've stood a good chance in OU again (maybe with DX-S too, but I won't push it very far).

More of a rant.

---

To fall to your question: it falls under lazy team building and many other things, but mostly what I've stated first. If there was one thing that made your team struggle and you had a chance to get rid of it, wouldn't you want to remove that Pokemon by making team building easier? And that there lies the problem: effective team building is barely necessary anymore. It's almost true that a person who's decent can throw a team with 6 random Pokemon and sweep the ladder if they tried hard enough. Team building is still something that is a key component to winning; however, it has been made too easy with DPPt. A lot of cookie cutters were implemented: Tyranitar, Scizor, Zapdos, Scarf Heatran... the list stretches pretty far. I have to agree: I'm sick of the mentality of banning more things is "good". And I promote testing of things such as Lati@s because I feel they could help patch this wretched metagame, and testing allows us to find information on how these Pokemon can "be overcentralizing" and finally help us find a true meaning of OU and Uber.

I'm sorry if I sound vague (I probably do) but it is late at night / etc.

 

[Matthew]

weren't you one of the guys who wanted people to stop using that DualScreen -> Mew strat in Ubers? >_>

Gen. Empoleon: God fuck! I can't be mean any more!
darkie: Empoleon is slowly evolving into a better user

I realize that you can't really ban in a ban tier any way, so it didn't matter. Also it was a legitimate team, I'd like to apologize to Extreem.

 

[blasphemy1]

why not if it makes the game more fun? banning Garchomp did just that, so I didn't see a problem in banning it. Not that I ever had a problem with it, just the game I found after it's banning turned to be more fun than with it

I also don't agree with this entirely, but I can see why people at the time thought about it. For one, I would much rather see Garchomp on every team than see Heatran's ugly face everywhere, same for Zapdos. Garchomp would have kept both of these in check... if only we knew what were to come (Zapdos w/Heat Wave). Anyways, I believe the reasons Garchomp was banned was:

-Immunity to Thunder Wave AND Sandstorm
-Resistance to Stealth Rock
-Swords Dance + Outrage 2HKOs all of its "counters"
-Enough bulk to switch into Lucario and Heatran, then sweep
-Sand Veil+Yache Berry, as sometimes people complained about "even if you get passed the berry, you might miss"


I really think these were, at the time, good enough reasons for banning Garchomp. However, no other pokemon can overcentralize the metagame as much as Garchomp did, mainly due to Stealth Rock keeping Salamence, Gyarados, and Zapdos in check, while Choice Scarf Heatran is a definite revenge killer for Scizor/Lucario.

 

[UltimoVenusaur]

There are compelling arguments to ban nearly any of the top-level OU Pokémon. Doesn't mean we should be looking to ban them.

Garchomp was nigh-uncounterable when all the chips were in place for a sweep, but even if it was easier to set up for Chomp than, say Gyara, Luke, Sala or Heatran, you still had to set up for things to go completely right. You needed SandStream up and you needed Rocks down and you needed a chance to Swords Dance... a skilled player could prevent all of that from happening and put Chomp in a corner. Again, it's easier said than done, but I've seen a lot of battles where a Garchomp user was one-and-done without getting a single kill. It can happen, and I feel like a lot of the premises given for bans always assume that the worst-case scenario is in play, when in reality, it takes a lot of freaking effort to get to that WCS.

Any game with more options is a better game. No one will dispute that. If you guys feel that banning one Pokémon so that teams can become more diverse is the way to go, then hey, it's your Shoddy server. You put a lot of time in. But in the end, I feel like it's a lot more rewarding to find ways around the big challenges put into the game.

And on the subject of hax... I still don't understand the aversion against luck that is held by what seems to be the majority of posters here, but I probably never will and thus will have to learn to agree to disagree. And this is coming from someone who gets critted at least twice a battle.

 

[Syberia]

And on the subject of hax... I still don't understand the aversion against luck that is held by what seems to be the majority of posters here, but I probably never will and thus will have to learn to agree to disagree. And this is coming from someone who gets critted at least twice a battle.

It's like when your favorite basketball team loses game 7 of the conference finals because someone makes a hail-mary halfcourt shot as the clock is running out. It's utter bullshit, and it's completely beyond either team's control. He just throws the ball up somewhere in the vicinity of the basket, probably without aiming or even looking much, and hopes it goes in.

 

[Chou Toshio]

Actually, I think people have a propensity to want change just for the sake of change. Lati@s will be an interesting experiment in my view just because it will be the first of a pokemon who has traditionally been Ubers coming down.

I'm almost willing to bet they will become OU just because people blindly want to change the game from how it is (they have a grudge against how it is).

 

[cim]

Chou, if people like change why were they not welcome of Skymin? Or even Scizor?

 

[noob3]

You guys arn't even playing pokemon. You're playing Pokemon: Community Edition. Until you guys play in some sort of offical league where a higher power (non player-base) makes the decisions for what is useable and isn't, you are in for a world of hurt. I gurantee you, if Blizzard let the community decide what got nerfed and buffed, WoW would be ruined in weeks. If Wizards of the Coast decided to close the DCI and let the players decide what cards were banned and restricted, Magic the Gathering would become unplayable. Fast.

The community is bitter, and usually has personal baggage when it comes to problamatic entitys within the metagame. Worrying about Smogon's teiring system is futile, as it is a futile system. If you have fun, great. That's why I'm here. That's why you should be here, too. Just have fun, guys!

 

[Matthew]

I don't even see the need for that post. We're debating what is an Uber (I guess), why people don't accept change and how people vote OU or Uber depending on what THEY want. Not if the metagame benefits from the pokemon, or doesn't change it. If they have a grudge against Shaymin-s then they're voting Uber no matter what.

So, the "Just have fun" comment has no relivance here.

 

[noob3]

"If they have a grudge against Shaymin-s then they're voting Uber no matter what."

This is exactly what I was trying to say. Letting players decide these things usually ends in bias. You need to let people with a vast knowledge of the game make these decisions, and not sore players who would more than likely vote to ban anything and everything if they got the chance. Until GameFreak is paying a high-skilled team of monkeys to do this for us, there's no use in even discussing it. Because it's a bad system,

 

[cim]

I learned a long time ago that bolding your sentences just makes you sound pretentious.

Uh, you fail to realize, noob3, that we're basically like the DCI for Pokémon. We play an alternate metagame based on the Pokémon universe, just like some people play five-color magic or whatever.

It's against our philosophy to let a group that doesn't give a shit about competitive play decide what is and is not broken for us.

 

[noob3]

Yes but those people who play five-color magic will never amount to anything when you compare them to the players that only go to sanctioned tournaments. Basically, we're scrubs.

 

[cim]

Smogon's purpose is not to produce the best players of some other metagame. it's to make a Pokémon metagame. Discussion of this is beyond the scope of this thread; I suggest reading Smogon philosophy before posting again/ Now can you please stop derailing what should be the best Stark thread of the year?

 

[Tangerine]

Sigh.... I think I give up. But "one last post".

This brings me to my next point, when should we classify something as Uber? Uber is something that means it has counters, but the counters fail some of the time.

No. We rejected this definition ages ago. The stronger statement to this fails (No counters does not imply uber) therefore this statement also fails as a definition of uber.

Garchomp is an example, it required you to use TWO fast pokemon that have an Ice attack to get it out of the game. Your opponent could see the ice attacks coming from a mile away and switch to his counter for that. Is Garchomp broken because he require two pokemon to take him down? What if one of those two pokemon die unfortunatly then what does that leave you with? An incredible sweeper who can OH-2HKO your entire team. I would say that Garchomp was broken.

The issue is that so many of you still look at the game so superficially and think that these superficial reasons are why "something got banned" or "something is broken" and that's particularly why that the words "uber" "broken" "overcentralized" lost their meanings ages ago.

Here, I disagree that banning Garchomp made the game more fun. Actually, you could say it made it slightly worse. Well, to me anyway. In the beginning I agreed that banning Garchomp allowed more Pokemon to see the light of day. Unforunately it felt only as a short-term solution.

After a while, I had a strange feeling the bannings were more like "witch hunts". And I don't even need to sit here and prove it, simply look at the Deoxys-S and Shaymin-S polls. That alone made me think hard about a lot of things. Did Garchomp, despite seemingly powerful, offer a weird "balance" to the metagame? I had this feeling that people always looked at Garchomp in the weirdest of ways. One, they considered Chain Chomp wrecking its counters (granted, it does); however, I could argue Salamence does that better any day (especially with a slightly higher Attack stat and an impressive 110 SpA stat). This is kind of how the whole thing started. Due to this set, it could beat anything yadayada.

The next thing to think about was its counters. According to people, it was nonexistant. Then the argument came in "if it requires two counters, it should simply be banned." Really? Could I argue about other Pokemon, such as Infernape, Lucario, Gengar, and many, MANY other Pokemon that have questionable switch-ins? I'll even bring some of the borderline ones such as Tyranitar and Rotom-Appliance to the mix. Blissey as a Gengar counter? What about Trick fucking up most of its abilities while annihilating everything else with STAB Shadow Ball and Focus Blast alone? Lucario doesn't really have true counters, despite what many think. Choice Specs and Swords Dance Lucario alone require seperate counters. Tyranitar has Hariyama and Machamp; however, the latter doesn't like Choice Band Aqua Tails. An interesting fact: Choice Band Tyranitar can 2HKO at the very least anything on an Obi Stall team with Aqua Tail / Stone Edge / Crunch / Pursuit (and Pursuit is the one move that could be ommitted for something such as Earthquake).

Now Sandstorm and Sand Veil have also become a devestating combo, offering more to luck. And this is where I will use something similair for an argument: Serene Grace. Doesn't this ability also promote luck? What about Snow Cloak? That gets pretty annoying too. Again, I find this argument very flawed as far as Sand Veil being the reason to ban this thing.

Finally we hit Yache Berry. Okay, I'll admit myself that it's quite a good option for Garchomp. But what about the forgotten SubSalac Chomp? I find this x100 more threatening as it gets a free Swords Dance plus has a chance of +1 Speed, annihilating everything in its path late-game.

So for those that are saying tl;dr, I'll sum it up for you. The reasons that Garchomp was "banned" IMO were as follows:

- Overcentralisation
- Yache Berry
- Consideration of a somewhat "gimmicky" set (Chain Chomp)
- Sand Veil
- Has the ability to hurt things in the late-game, just like everything else
- Lack of Counters
- Break through Stall (I've felt someone would use this as an example, and I find it a little horrible of an argument myself)

This is exactly what I mean. Not only did this user strawman the hell out of the Garchomp argument, but also has the same issue above. More people need to think in terms of effects rather than causes since causes don't tell you anything.

Garchomp's real effect in the game was that it shifted the metagame heavily towards physical defense and/or Speed. This is not just because Garchomp was "broken" however or that it "required two counters". competitive players who aim to maximize their chances of winning thought that this was way to limiting - that Garchomp's presence in the metagame forces them to centralize around it a "bit too much" and was not happy with the amount of choices they have to work with. Many people were able to apply this argument specificially for Garchomp, hence it was "banned".

How many good players started using Haban berry near the end of Garchomp days to beat the other Garchomp in a stand off? Surprisingly many. This should tell you how centralizing Garchomp was =)

The people who continually bring up how Stealth Rocks and Shaymin-s is broken because of reasons that they pull out of no where are really only wanting to ban it since they have a personal bias against it, not because they've reasearched it. So really if you're wanting to ban Stealth Rocks because "it'll open up the Metagame for three or four new pokemon" and you wanted Shaymin-s banned because "Seed Flare and Air Slash fucked me over" then that's not good reasoning. It's you carrying a personal bias against what you think is a "suspect".

There's an intrinsic "new thing bias" in most voters, and no one ever addresses it but I'm pretty certain it's there. People use terms they pick up by glancing at smarter members (not me, I'm guilty of what Im describing) like "overcentralization", then twist their meaning into some twisted, convulted reason that essentially boils down to "I had to change my team." People hate change.

I've said it a billion times. If any current powerful OU Pokémon (Tyranitar, Scizor, Salamence, hell even Gyarados) were dropped into the emtagame for a one month test where it was labelled as a "suspect" by everyone and people needed a specific check for it, then they will vote Uber. Regardless that dozens of Pokémon require checks, it's only the new ones that people notice and thus complain about.

People also want to ban things they don't like.

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1654291&postcount=423

My friend, I propose to you and the rest of the community a new tier that will act as a truce between OU and Semi-uber....Semi-uber people. Think of Semi-ubers including the top tier OU and at the same time, the low tier Ubers. Think of Warcraft III Dota, where you have hero classes command lower beings into battle. If in a Pokemon battle, one chooses to use a Semi-uber, then it is only honorable that the other user use 1 or bravely fight with other standard OU and lower tier beings.

yeah, that's an excellent solution, except this does absolutely nothing to do with how Smogon tiers things at all. You apparently have no idea what you're saying considering you are claiming that the Smogon tiering system is flawed and can only be fixed by creating a whole new tier that does... the same thing! Way to overcomplicate the game and miss the point entirely.

Smogon itself has recently lost its main role in making Pokemon a competitive game. That's my opinion and I'm sure others like Gen Empoleon see that too.

Yes of course, because the set of ignoramus around Stark (which definitely includes you btw) represents this site and what the administration decides to do. Oh wait. Shame the administration doesn't care and what they do in terms of policies is what defines the site and not "stark mountain".

You guys arn't even playing pokemon. You're playing Pokemon: Community Edition. Until you guys play in some sort of offical league where a higher power (non player-base) makes the decisions for what is useable and isn't, you are in for a world of hurt. I gurantee you, if Blizzard let the community decide what got nerfed and buffed, WoW would be ruined in weeks. If Wizards of the Coast decided to close the DCI, Magic the Gathering would become unplayable. Fast.

The community is bitter, and usually has personal baggage when it comes to problamatic entitys within the metagame. Worrying about Smogon's teiring system is futile, as it is a futile system. If you have fun, great. That's why I'm here. That's why you should be here, too. Just have fun, guys!

Except Pokemon: Smogon Edition is designed to fix the flaws that the official tier list has. The official tier list is hardly competitive, and this is why Smogon is able to make its own tiers and get away with it.

Even if Wizard of the Coast decided to close DCI, people will still play Magic. It's a decent game. Just because the "official" holders don't support the game anymore doesn't make the game unplayable.

The issue with the community isn't that they are bitter, just ignorant and incapable of understanding each other.

But in the core, "I agree with you" and this is why I think the "intelligent users" should be making the calls rather than "the popular vote", but in the end, the Administration picked this policy because they adhere to a different philosphy. Considering most of the users here aren't capable of raising a critical point that might cause them to reconsider I think that you guys should stop bothering with this nonsense and just go play more Pokemon or something. I think you should think about it this way - the "Administration" is literally the "officials" here and we don't really give a damn about how Nintendo runs things considering how much FiveKRunner is mocked for adhering to his philosophy of the game.