Ok my turn.
Format:
Simply the best suited for our PL would be the Belgian Pro League proposal, I think its nice and easy to work and flow with. Even for me I have been player in PLs but never administrated further than that. Regardless of what the 3rd slot would be. Its a good range of time to get engaged but also not lose that initial engagement. Considering we'll get players that would only participate in BDSPPL and not touch the tier again, as well as recurrent players of the tier.
Retentions and Self-buy managers:
About retentions I basically agree with both Carter and Xilefi, some players with the best record went really low valued in price and the ratio of price and WR is to be considered. I honestly don't know how to exactly handle this but keeping them as the price they were is just giving free members and it would be unfair imo. Regarding Self-Buy Managers, I think one per team is totally plausible, with a price of around 10k sounds good to me. Both managers playing kinda goes against the thing of, well, managing.
3rd slot:
Oh boy, the hottest take would be mine I guess.
I heavily disagree with having a suspect slot to begin with, I think it was shown how flawed this whole idea was in the last BDSPPL, at least I never saw the appeal of it. In the first case of releasing a currently Uber Pokemon / Ability:
Its a sweked metagame that involves you prepping for said Pokemon and building a biased thought of said Pokemon or playstyle thinking it isn't performing as good as you may think. This is a slot that would be an
out of context and meaningless metagame, it will not provide anything to gain from as in praxis, its totally out of what the actual metagame of BDSP OU is. If we for example, for some reason suspect slot Blaziken, I would just load priority HO and now you'll think Blaziken indeed not as broken now, which is factually wrong. Think it at how when they teach you in school something that in the everyday life doesn't perform as what they taught you, and you learn it by experience, the experience is in this case the regular BDSP OU. I think having a suspect slot would be a waste of time, energy, and prepping for something that would lead to nothing of use. I don't have to argue about Manaphy per say because
I already mentioned freeing an Uber, especially one that will become another threat in the builder to have in mind, its an awful idea in my opinion. Regarding Starmie and Weavile, I disagree with both being suspected as a slot too. None of them provide merely the enough restrictions in building or battle to think of suspecting them.
I want to refer to my post in which I cover Starmie, and how the last Seasonal helped in shaping the builder to deal with Starmie while keeping cohesive teams.
I don't believe it is broken but I do believe that in the builder it is the mon that takes the most ressources to check/counter. At least Garchomp, that kinda raises the same problems, is checked by overall better good mons than Weavile
Regarding Weavile per say I actually disagree with this take and would say Garchomp requires more resources to check than Weavile, and the quality of pokemon that do check them is around the same.
I would be more lean to suspect Garchomp than Weavile or Starmie.
What I do like for a 3rd Slot is simply
having more games, therefore,
my prefered would be a Bo3 slot, I think saying its extreming mental and energy resources is honestly an exaggeration, and with the state of the metagame and how teams would build. Yes, you would probably see recycling teams a lot, but that doesn't mean the quality of the games would be hindered. In any case, a
Bo3 slot rewards other trends of skill like scouting in battle, counter apporaching, and compensates for simply bad luck that can screw your G1, in this case a Bo1. If not, I would just keep it as a regular 3rd slot.
But... If I really had to, if I had to choose a Pokemon for a suspect that's an Uber. That, as some may know already and have talked with me, would be
Deoxys-Defense.
I know this would be for the most part pointless since everytime I bring this topic I've only gotten inmediate negative responses without even considering the fact of giving the idea a thought in their minds. Which is honestly disappointing, as imo I'm not bringing up something utterly inadmissible, Deoxys-Defense is not a Pokemon that would tear apart the whole tier. On the contrary, I think it's a different apporach that hasn't been brought to the table and just has been negated by how the annoyance of this Pokemon could be in praxis, having amazing utility and defensive capabilities.
I would like if you just consider it for a moment though.
Contrary of what a Manaphy or other threat coming back, Deo-D slot would not be a metagame centralized on countering this Pokemon, as its role its on the most part defensive, it would be a better portrayal of what the actual metagame is if it had Deoxys-Defense allowed. I hope this make sense.
Deoxys-Defense
started in Ubers inmediately when it got released from HOME with the other forms,
more because of a historical status than anything else, because in practice this form is far worse in what in offers than the others, those other three would be inadmissible to consider. I don't like to bring other metagames since they don't reflect of course the state of BDSP, but for the record,
Deoxys-Defense has only been Ubers in past generations when it had access to Toxic, which was pretty much a mandatory move on it, it wasn't released in SWSH, and in SV is currently RU, meanwhile the other forms are highly tiered. Again, SV doesn't represent in any form the state of BDSP, but it has some applications you can take, since is a closer gen to look at instead of looking back.
BDSP is not DPP or any old tier where mechanics were much different, so looking up to SV is much more plausible.
Summing Up:
- Belgian Pro Format
- Retentions with very specific rulest and price that I cannot come up with a solution.
- 1 Self-buy manager. Price 10k.
- 3rd slot: Bo3 > Regular 3rd OU slot >>> Suspect Garchomp = Suspect Deoxys-Defense >>>>>> Suspect Weavile/Starmie >>>>> Suspect Manaphy
