Kevin Garrett
is a competitor
I support the motion brought about in LOS’s conclusion. The Drought + Chlorophyll ban denatured the fabric of the entire gen.
The arena trap ban was hasty at best. Considering how cresselia is capable of soloing an entire team, once Tyranitar has been removed, then probably we should have looked into her rather than banning Diglett and Trapinch. We shouldn't perpetuate the mistake by banning yet another trapping ability which clearly isn't consistent enough to represent a threat to the tier. Also, even assuming Diglett is actually "broken" there's no proof Trapinch would have had the same success (big word here) if he stayed around. What's done is done but targeting the trappers was an overly pragmatic approach and I don't think we should use it to justify a Shadow Tag removal -- on the contrary, we should be more careful with our bans from now on. You say "there are a lot of mental gymnastics" involved in keeping shadow tag...would you mind explaining which? Arena trap and shadow tag users mostly have different targets.re goth: no one thinks it's great or relevant, but there are a lot of mental gymnastics you have to do if we want to ban arena trap but not shadow tag.
banning arena trap tacitly suggests shadow tag should be banned as well for policy's sake. it is a better ability after all. this is historically how it has been handled. i don't mind breaking this precedent if others are on board.The arena trap ban was hasty at best. Considering how cresselia is capable of soloing an entire team, once Tyranitar has been removed, then probably we should have looked into her rather than banning Diglett and Trapinch. We shouldn't perpetuate the mistake by banning yet another trapping ability which clearly isn't consistent enough to represent a threat to the tier. Also, even assuming Diglett is actually "broken" there's no proof Trapinch would have had the same success (big word here) if he stayed around. What's done is done but targeting the trappers was an overly pragmatic approach and I don't think we should use it to justify a Shadow Tag removal -- on the contrary, we should be more careful with our bans from now on. You say "there are a lot of mental gymnastics" involved in keeping shadow tag...would you mind explaining which? Arena trap and shadow tag users mostly have different targets.
That said, how about we: ban Swift Swim (no cherubi here), ban Sand Rush (neither here), free Drought + Chlorophyll. A Swift Swim ban is justified by the fact basically every SS user is broken and / or problematic (other than the obvious Kingdra, Kabutops and Ludicolo I'm also looking at Sub BD Poliwrath, Qwilfish which is basically a pseudo-Deoxys, and even things like Shell Smash Carracosta). A Sand Rush ban is justified by the fact Sand teams are so flexible and dominant it's simply not fair they also get to have speed boosting abilities (even if we're talking about Stoutland and Sandslash here, which are not inherently broken). A Drought + Chlorophyll unban is justified by the fact Chlorophyll users, especially without Arena trap, are not broken in the slightest while their "home" archetype, Sun, is pretty much forced in predictable structures and it mostly has always been at the bottom of the metagame, so it's not like we're pushing it over the edge. This compromise should make everyone happy, while not outright killing our tiering principles: we keep non-Rush Excadrill, we don't delete three years worth of metagame development, and at the same time we free something that should have never been banned to begin with. But all before that, we have to determine whether Excadrill is 100% a problem or not, 'cause if people feel like it's not banworthy then we should simply keep things as they are. And things aren't that bad.
Yeah, I admit I focused too much on SSwim but I just wanted to recall that back when comparing Sun to Rain and Sandbanning arena trap tacitly suggests shadow tag should be banned as well for policy's sake. it is a better ability after all. this is historically how it has been handled. i don't mind breaking this precedent if others are on board.
this is fairly obvious if you have an iota of understanding in this conversation, which, given your post, you do not. yes, we know swift swim users are strong. no, we won't ban cresselia. and no, none of your generalizations have pushed this thread anywhere closer to a conclusion.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a BW OU suspect, idt it would affect whatever low tier Sandlash is currently in.As this would functionally ban Sandslash in every gen 5 format except BW Ubers as it will lack a legal ability (its only options are Sand Rush and Sand Veil), will this ban be transitive to lower tiers?
In addition, should this go through, what level of precedent would this allow for in determining bans and unbans in both BW and other old gens? For example, does this open the door for a discussion on banning Prankster in BW OU in order to unban Thundurus-I, or a discussion on banning Protean in ORAS?
I'd appreciate it if the council would clarify explicitly whether or not this departure from current precedent of not "nerfing" Pokemon to keep them legal is intended as a one time thing in order strictly to preserve Sand Force and Mold Breaker Excadrill in BW OU and should not be used as precedent for future bans, just as Drizzle+Swift Swim was intended to preserve Drizzle as a part of BW OU, allow for Rain Dance Swift Swim, and not ban a large number of broken Pokemon for their ability to abuse infinite rain Swift Swim according to the original thread.
Since the thread related to this question didn't actually conclude clearly - in fact the way it ended could be interpreted to suggest the opposite - and the ORAS OU Baton Pass flat ban very much carried down to lower tiers (you can easily check on PS if you want) I felt that asking whether or not this would actually impact lower tiers, both by functionally removing Sandslash from BW RU and preventing the use of manual sand teams in lower tiers, was appropriate.Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a BW OU suspect, idt it would affect whatever low tier Sandlash is currently in.
Old Generation Council bans will only impact the OU metagames they are targeted to impact, thus minimizing collateral and eliminating situations such as this one. I have notified The Immortal on discord to make the change, but feel free to instruct people to play in gen5ubers until this is implemented.Sorry to revive this, but it had an unintended consequence that really should be fixed. In the RU WC Eternal Spirit tried running a team with Sandslash and apparently was not allowed: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ru-world-cup-week-1.3644305/#post-7972616
Now I tried it myself and yes, Sand Rush is not usable in BW RU because of the ban. The other problem for Sandslash is that you cannot run it with the other abilities like you would with Stoutland, since Sand Veil is also banned. Therefore, Sandslash is totally unusable in BW because of this result, which might not change anything for BW OU but it's like one of the three spinners and three ground types for BW RU so we'd like to keep it for our tournaments....?