Removing a mechanic from a metagame is never an easy decision. Traditionally, when a mechanic is an issue in a metagame, we find a way to mitigate its impact while retaining the core aspect of what it does. Examples of this include Sleep/Freeze Clause, early Baton Pass clauses, and Weather Clauses. In the discussion leading up to this, we considered many options. Should we wait longer and see how the metagame unfolds? Should we take action by quickbanning the problem Pokemon? After days of discussion, we have decided to ban Dynamax entirely from Little Cup.
Waiting is obviously a problem because most of the active playerbase recognises that we have a problem. While in theory quickbanning some of the most notable abusers is a solution, there is a strong belief that due to Little Cup's damage calculations combined with limited defensive counterplay, there are too many Pokemon that can abuse this mechanic to a strong degree, to the point where we would have to ban possibly 10+ Pokemon, such as Farfetch'd-Galar, Vullaby, Rufflet, Woobat (post-Home), Scraggy, Onix, and others. Even Pokemon that don't come across as obviously broken with the mechanic can easily snowball out of control, because in most cases, the best defensive option against Dynamax is your own Dynamax, which in most cases is coming after your opponent has already had a turn to gain a Max Boost. It is easier and cleaner from a tiering perspective to simply ban the mechanic entirely, and it lines up with our belief that the mechanic is too overbearing for Little Cup.
I have included statements below from fellow Little Cup Council members:
(Remaining council statement coming later)
We will be implementing this through the newly-created Dynamax Clause, which will prevent you from Dynamaxing in your battle.
This ban will apply immediately to LC Ekans and all future Gen 8 Little Cup tournaments. Thank you to everyone that participated in the discussion and voiced their opinions to me over the past week.
Waiting is obviously a problem because most of the active playerbase recognises that we have a problem. While in theory quickbanning some of the most notable abusers is a solution, there is a strong belief that due to Little Cup's damage calculations combined with limited defensive counterplay, there are too many Pokemon that can abuse this mechanic to a strong degree, to the point where we would have to ban possibly 10+ Pokemon, such as Farfetch'd-Galar, Vullaby, Rufflet, Woobat (post-Home), Scraggy, Onix, and others. Even Pokemon that don't come across as obviously broken with the mechanic can easily snowball out of control, because in most cases, the best defensive option against Dynamax is your own Dynamax, which in most cases is coming after your opponent has already had a turn to gain a Max Boost. It is easier and cleaner from a tiering perspective to simply ban the mechanic entirely, and it lines up with our belief that the mechanic is too overbearing for Little Cup.
I have included statements below from fellow Little Cup Council members:
Ban Dynamax. It's a radically different mechanic from everything we've seen so far; and by augmenting a single mon's strengths to an extreme degree, it (at least on paper) is more likely to cause the mon to be overcentralizing than existing mechanics are. While we could try to balance around a metagame with Dynamax included, instead banning broken Dynamax abusers, this would involve a significant time investment that may result in having to ban far more mons than in a non-Dynamax metagame, in which case we would probably want to ban Dynamax anyways. If time constraints didn't exist, then trying to reach a balanced Dynamax metagame first would be the best move - after all, we've only played with Dynamax for a week - but with the understanding that both ekans and SPL are right around the corner, the safer option would be to revert to a more familiar and easily balanced metagame.
It hurts me to put a ban on a new mechanic at the beginning of the gen. From day 1 I was very vocal in that we should not rush into banning something that could be the signature aspect of the generation. However, after reviewing through the lens of someone who valued a healthy metagame instead of a new one, I realize this is the proper decision moving forward. Dynamax simply has no defensive counterplay in LC that I can justify keeping it in the metagame. While it might be possible to stall out turns or use blatantly unorthodox sets and unviable options to keep a Dynamaxed mon in check, the defensive which other tiers might possess to keep this mechanic simply does not exist at the current moment. Opting to remove problematic mons that abused Dynamax was also a viable option that we could have chosen, but I believe that the number of things that we would have needed to ban could have potentially rolled into the double digits, thus removing the identity of LC.
Dynamaxing does everything an LC mon would ever want. Considering that several LC mons already start with +1 defenses, providing them with an option to double their HP after setting up, giving them a Z-move-like wall-breaking option that potentially doubles as a stat booster, field-effect, or weather is simply too much to provide to one Pokemon. You can play in this god-mode state for three turns in any game of your choice. Your opponent now constantly needs to play on the backfoot if this option is chosen, which makes LC, not into a game of skill but a game of momentum. If you're the first one to lose momentum, you could potentially lose the game without much of your own comeback mechanic. On top of that, Dynamaxing defensively or on reflex to your opponent is simply unviable as an option. The mechanic is so much more offensively biased than it is defensively, considering there is no way to alter your defensive stats while Dynamaxed and the only thing that you can do to stall turns is max guard, which essentially means you cannot take advantage of the free boosts and wall-breaking ability. With all things considered, and in the hopes of not repeating everyone on the council, removing Dynamax will be a net positive for LC and will contribute to a better metagame.
Dynamaxing does everything an LC mon would ever want. Considering that several LC mons already start with +1 defenses, providing them with an option to double their HP after setting up, giving them a Z-move-like wall-breaking option that potentially doubles as a stat booster, field-effect, or weather is simply too much to provide to one Pokemon. You can play in this god-mode state for three turns in any game of your choice. Your opponent now constantly needs to play on the backfoot if this option is chosen, which makes LC, not into a game of skill but a game of momentum. If you're the first one to lose momentum, you could potentially lose the game without much of your own comeback mechanic. On top of that, Dynamaxing defensively or on reflex to your opponent is simply unviable as an option. The mechanic is so much more offensively biased than it is defensively, considering there is no way to alter your defensive stats while Dynamaxed and the only thing that you can do to stall turns is max guard, which essentially means you cannot take advantage of the free boosts and wall-breaking ability. With all things considered, and in the hopes of not repeating everyone on the council, removing Dynamax will be a net positive for LC and will contribute to a better metagame.
I think dynamax is a pretty unhealthy mechanic; it's nearly overpowered offensively, and the only thing that you can do to trade well against offensive dynamax is to dynamax in response. Timing and luck in predicting a dynamax in terms of how much it can impact the game can make games depend pretty much on a single dynamax. I think that Pokemon like Ponyta-Galar and Gastly are broken with this dynamic active, and these are just examples; you can have water-spam easily win games by setting up rain and abusing, say, Wingull or Corphish with it. The thing that makes it broken is that there are simply far more opportunities to dynamax than z-move (our previous idea of a single-turn power boost); every single pokemon on your team can dynamax every single move, leading to infinitely many possibilities, none of which our metagame is balanced for or able to handle. This leads to having a metagame where there are far too many offensive threats, leading to matchup being pretty much the biggest factor in a dynamax metagame. I don't think this is healthy for the tier, so I think dynamax is definitely something that should go.
I believe Dynamaxing is very unhealthy for the metagame, for a number of reasons. Due to the fact you can Dynamax at any time with any Pokemon it creates what I would consider a lot of unhealthy 50/50s, wherein choosing whether to Dynamax or not is hugely influential on the overall game, putting an inflated amount of importance on one single turn - somewhat along the lines of how in the Pinch meta games would often come down to predicting whether Vullaby would U-Turn the incoming Bird-check, albeit occurring in a multitude of situations. There is also the sheer number of Pokemon that become broken through the mechanic - it's difficult to see an end to the bans when you consider how broken some of the max moves are, most notably Flying & Fighting. I also heavily disagree with some of what people have listed as good counterplay to Dynamax, for example I would argue that Berry Juice only makes Dynamax stronger, as in regular LC counterplay to Berry Juice exists in that it's often possible to just KO the mon outright without triggering BJ, but with a Dynamaxed mon it's near impossible to not set it off. Personally I think listing Max Guard as a good option to counter Dynamax is ridiculous, if you have to use your own Dynamax defensively and then effectively just burn turns I don't see how that is an argument for it being health, and as Kingler mentioned in the metagame thread, if you're going to do this then your Dynamax mon must pose some sort of a threat offensively for it to even be effective.
I think dynamax is clearly deserving of a ban in LC. The foremost reason to me is the ridiculous unpredictability and lack of punishment for the mechanic. The fact that any mon can dynamax at any time, while preserving its choice of item makes it far more potent than z-moves ever were. The impact of double HP at level 5 is also insane as it makes it extremely difficult to kill a dynamaxed mon and warps the entire metagame around trying to avoid a dynamax setup or sweep. Dynamax enables ridiculous offensive firepower with little to no drawback and breaks a vast variety of mons in an already limited tier. I believe it’s the ideal solution to ban the mechanic and allow LC to develop a more balanced metagame.
After about a week playing the meta in its current state, I firmly believe that Dynamax is a mechanic that is too much for LC to handle and should subsequently be banned. I don't think it's just a simple additional mechanic we have to deal with. Within the confines of LC it allows a user to essentially create a super mon for 3 turns, doubling HP, spamming z moves, and reaping the benefits of the bountiful extra effects and snowball ability that Max moves provide. There is also a massive amount of unpredictability inherent in the mechanic as it allows you to use it on any pokemon, at any time, and with no item to signal when/if it will happen, with the choice lock breaking ability just adding layers to the uncertainty. OU has it tough enough, but in LC, where it's harder to deal with offensive threats reliably, stat boosts mean that much more, and we don't have access to something like Ditto, there is little to no counter play available. While there are clearly the S-tier users of Dynamax (Farfetch'd, Scraggy, Gastly, Rufflett, etc.), I believe these are just the cream of the crop at utilizing an all around broken mechanic. Ponyta, Onix, Wingull, Vullaby, Woobat (sensing a bird theme here), among others are all mons that can be utilized to just as much game breaking potential as the aforementioned threats but just to a slightly smaller degree. For this reason, I think LC would be in a much better state if we banned the singular mechanic rather than the plethora of mons we'd have to ban in order to have a stable metagame.
I will be voting against the quickban of Dynamax. Dynamax completely changes how we play the game and instantly breaks 7+ pokemon that we would have to ban to keep it, but I think it distinguishes itself from a move like baton pass or an ability like shadow tag in that neither of those mechanics were designed by gamefreak as something a game should be centered around. This mechanic was designed to completely change the way mons is played and to add an extra factor that decides games: who chooses the correct time to dynamax. Banning this mechanic is for me akin to banning something like natures or held items: because these mechanics were included as something competitive battles will be centered around banning them would separate us from the cartridge to a degree that we have never been close to before. Do not take this dissent as a defense of dynamax, however; I merely think it is our responsibility to attempt to balance dynamax by banning the things it immediately breaks. I still believe that chances are that dynamax would remain a broken mechanic even after these drastic changes to the metagame.
(Remaining council statement coming later)
We will be implementing this through the newly-created Dynamax Clause, which will prevent you from Dynamaxing in your battle.
This ban will apply immediately to LC Ekans and all future Gen 8 Little Cup tournaments. Thank you to everyone that participated in the discussion and voiced their opinions to me over the past week.
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