I never said there were precedent, I am just sharing my opinion on what I think optimal tiering should be. I thought the lack of precedent of a similar case was the reason why this was posted in PR. If someone could name instances of other time where a lower tier had the choices between banning two different elements allowed in an even lower tier, I would be glad, otherwise I'd like this thread to set precedent for next time such a thing happens.
We should never need to look into other lower tiers needs in order to do our tierings. This idea that we cant tend to our own playerbase needs because a ban might cause issues in PU or ZU is simply illogical. We need to act based on whats broken in our own tier and whats better for our players; if you have an issue with ban transitivity in case of abilities, items, moves and such, then thats a whole different matter that deserves its own thread. The optimal tiering is one where a given tiers council bans stuff it deems to be too overwhelming or unhealthy, or leaves it up to their players to judge by themselves if said element should stay or go through a suspect test (and even then, more often than not the council decision to vote or suspect something is a reflection of what the community thinks is broken in the first place).
I know right, adapting to meta changes must be from some sort of imaginary world. Calling Poliwrath shitmon and not knowing how much it can actually provide with its typing and ability must be tough when we re spamming barely ranked Beartic. My posts in the first was all about to understand the NUs point of view to all of this. Im entirely talking about NU and its meta game as i have been part of it and know it in and out.
Issue is, theres a difference between adapting to something through an organic, natural
and healthy way and just being forced into subpar choices because those are the only effective counterplay to said mon or playstyle. Yes, we can check it with Poliwrath, Jellicent, Vaporeon, phys def Omastar, Quagsire, Avalugg or whatever; but it becomes an issue when these mons just arent good at all in other matchups, or when youre FORCED into having to use them else you just lose to a certain threat (like hail, in this case). A forced adaptation was Vaporeon or Gastro + Esca being used in just about every team back during the Arctovish hail days because either you did it, or you lost to the fish. A healthy and natural one was the rise in usage of LO Starmie, Heliolisk and Toxicroak as an answer to said higher Vap usage, all of which are still really good even if you dont face one (cue people spamming Scarf Helio vs Hoen in SCL expecting him to HO at some point). If we have to rely to suboptimal choices to check one specific playstyle, with said mons being bad at the very best vs the rest of the tier, then thats a clear sign that playstyle should get the axe.
Dont get me wrong expulso, i do agree with a-slash ban, but beartic alone under hail is something i cant see being too much.
Thats the issue though. At which point do we just sit down and say "hey, maybe Arctozolt, Arctovish and A-Slash have something in common making them broken, as well as turning Beartic into a meta threat" instead of individually banning them one by one? This just sounds like these endless BP threads where people keep trying to nerf it instead of banning the move / banning boosting pass.
3 out of 4 fully evolved Slush Rush users were (would be) banned at some point in NU, if we consider A-Slash. Do you guys really not see how Slush Rush is an issue? Yes, the issue might be solved if we just ban A-Slash, but why do we need to keep trimming it down instead of just banning the one single broken element they share? If A-Slash is banned as a technicality, then so be it. Our goal is to ban what we perceive as broken, and we consider that to be Slush Rush. A-Slash going as a result or not, the original ban should by all means be preserved.
A higher tier does not have to consider the tiers below them when banning anything. We (UU) banned Arctozolt earlier this gen when it was what, ZUBL? and rightfully did not really give a shit about its relevance in RU or below. NU is completely free to ban both Alolan Sandslash and Beartic as they please and the tiers below them.
Thank you, seriously. Taking into consideration how our tiering could impact tiers below us would make tiering
less efficient in the end, since we would basically need to take god knows how many other metas into account instead of just our own when making decisions.
In the context of major tiering decisions though, banning an ability has always been on the lower end of the priorities. The only abilities that consistently get banned are weather-setting abilities, because of their ability to facilitate unbalanced breakers. Nobody's going to deny that Alolan Sandslash under Hail is really good, but is Alolan Sandslash's dominance not a product of a playstyle that was banned up until a few months ago?
It indeed is on the lower end of things, which is why we tried our best to avoid doing so. We banned Arctozolt, then Arctovish, and now seriously discussing banning A-Slash. Thing is, we've reached a point where we just cant ignore how broken Slush Rush is, which is why we're finally acting upon it. We had Snow Warning banned previously, but we decided to bring it back because 1) we thought Slush Rush A-Slash wouldnt be enough to keep hail broken, and 2) that would mean freeing Vanilluxe, a healthy addition to our tier that has been seeing competitive use since then even as a standalone option, mainly as a breaker. Banning Slush Rush instead of Snow Warning wouldnt just put us into a situation where hail cant possibly be broken, but also freeing a currently very welcoming new Pokémon into our tier. If tiering is meant to make our tiers as objectively better as possible, then I cant see why we shouldnt take such route.
Regardless of how you feel about the ban, it's difficult to deny that the rollout of the decision has started controversy. To be clear, NU does not hold all responsibility to look out for the lower tiers. Despite this, to have zero conversation until AFTER the announcement is in poor taste. When
Light Clay was banned from RU and when
RNG Items were banned from OU, discussion was held upon the impact it would have. Even if one disagreed with the bans, at least there was some consideration of the effects it would have. Thus, the ban comes as a bit of a blindside hit to a lot of people in the ZU community. You can argue that these discussions aren't ALWAYS necessary, but when it's in regards to a Pokémon that plays one of the most valuable parts in a metagame, having zero discourse only adds a lack of transparency.
The way I see it at least, these threads werent meant to ask people to voice their opinions on how such changes would affect lower tiers (in fact, posts adressing this only showed up way after), but rather because of the nature of the things being tested. We very, very rarely ban items specially widespread ones like Light Clay that can be used by a variety of mons, and the RNG discussion thread was also of the very same nature. They werent originally meant for people to voice their concerns on how itd impact tiers below the ones on each threads OP, but rather for other users and tiering authorities to help better handle the issue at hand (an item that has been an integral part of just about every tier since DPP, and a whole class of luck based ones). With that in mind, I think the situation presented in these threads was quite different from ours, since ability bans are (while still not that common) more frequent than item ones.
What makes my two primary concerns come together is that they both break precedent. When Shadow Tag got banned, it's because there was an attempt at just banning Gothorita, but then people started abusing their pre-evolutions. Glalie and Bibarel were going to be banned because of how they abused Moody, but it turns out that even Bidoof could abuse it to success, thus causing a Moody ban entirely. Slush Rush is a very different scenario, as not only would we never see a Pokémon like Alolan Sandshrew get success in NU, but it's even debatable how good Beartic would be as a standalone Slush Rush sweeper. Nevertheless, I couldn't care less about losing Beartic or Alolan Sandshrew.
This further adds to the whole idea behind banning Slush Rush, though: we banned Arctozolt, then Arctovish, and now we are once again having to take action on hail because, even after all our individual Pokémon bans, its still broken. You dont have to go as far as look into A-Sandshrew for that, but rather just take into consideration how many other Slush Rush mons we had to ban before reaching the conclusion we're better off without that ability. Thats the same idea behind banning Arena Trap for example: Dugtrio was its biggest offender (and, if Im not mistaken, it did get banned with Arena Trap still being legal, or there was a discussion surrounding it), yet people chose to ban the ability as a whole because, in the end, it was still an unhealthy and broken element, even though no one would argue that Trapinch was a powerhouse in OU or something like that.
All in all, in my opinion, NU took the wrong decision by quickbanning Slush Rush this way. First, Slush Rush Beartic should have been given a chance in NU without Alolan Sandslash. Second, if Beartic proved to be an issue, a PR thread should have been put up before NU takes a vote, discussing whether banning Beartic, Slush Rush, or Snow Warning is the right decision.
Why? Should OU unban Shadow Tag and then make one individual suspect or vote for each of Gothorita, Gothitelle, Gothita, Wobbufett and Wynaut? We were heading onto our 3rd Slush Rush related ban OUT OF 4 POSSIBLE ONES. Where should we draw the line and recognize
the ability is the issue? And I honestly think this argument of "ban something, wait. If broken, ban" is kinda funny because that was literally how we were handling hail with the fossil bans and it proved to not work. Thats like saying BW OU should go around banning every Swift Swim mon until all thats left is Armaldo, Lumineon and Horsea. Thats quite the exaggeration, I know, but just trying to show how we cant be banning each individual broken element when they have one common thing making them broken. Of course eventually that thing wont be broken anymore, after all you already banned like 90% of the unhealthy elements attached to it, but by then why not just ban the broken thing itself instead of butchering a whole tier with countless bans?
That is oversimplifying the actual discussion. First, there is another option which is banning Snow Warning. Snow Warning used to be banned over Slush Rush and NU was fine, banning the weather setting ability has always been the precedent bar the mess that is BWOU tiering. Snow Warning and Slush Rush are also not equal in term of non-Pokemon ban, since the second also implies two Pokemon bans. The three Pokemon ban versus Slush Rush is also misleading, since Slush Rush ban is indeed one non-Pokemon ban + 2 Pokemon bans. Also it is not minimum 3, as I said in the previous paragraph it is minimum 2 and maximum 3, if we ignore LC Pokemon.
Its not about how many 'mons we
currently have banned, but how many times we had to take action at all on this matter. Why do we have to keep suspecting individual Pokémon all the time instead of just banning Slush Rush? Also weather setting abilities were often banned as an attempt to preserve the possibility of manual weather (something hardly even viable with hail). By banning Drizzle and Drought you can still retain the viable manual weather setter with heat/the rain rock + secondary setter + speed boosting threats, not to mention how theres a difference between banning like, 50+ mons with Swift Swim or just banning Drizzle and Drought. Funnily enough, Drought being banned in NU bans about as many Pokémon as we had to with Slush Rush already. Also... Isnt a 3 pokémon ban (75% of the total EXISTING ones) enough to warrant a look at an ability being potentially broken?
There is no recent history about quickbanning a Speed boosting ability*.
We had to due to our particular circumstances. Our circuit is just about to start and we already have other actual suspects scheduled, and the NU community was pretty unanimous in regard of Slush Rush being banned so a proper suspect would hardly change things (heck, I havent seen a single NUer voice their opinions against this decision, and our one council member that also has an active role in a tier below us is quite the supporter of this too). We already have a precedent over banning abilities or broken, non-Pokémon elements in general if thats the matter; I dont think we should need a precent over every small step we take towards tiering when there have been incredibly similar ones.
This ban makes a precedent where any council of any tier can quickban by council vote any ability with very limited discussions, without testing deeply other alternatives, and despite valid interrogations about the well founded of the targetted element. It's difficult or incoherent to justify that Slush Rush is intrinsically an ability overbroken. PU and ZU didn't have this experience at least and there is a clear distinction to make with other previous banned abilities who would make any mon jump into cellings of tiers.
That already happens, though. Every council has the power to quickban elements we judge as being broken, however we always do so after 1) taking each council members opinion into consideration, and mainly 2) taking the tier playerbases opinions into consideration. Point 2 is the most important one here, and through discussion in both our np threads as well as discord it was pretty clear most (if not the whole) community agreed quick action should be taken on this matter specially with our circuit having just started + our most used Pokémon leaving the tier and clearing the road for a multitude of other threats to be potentially broken and suspect worthy. Also that Slush Rush line was... A bit suspicious to say the least, considering how weve had to ban other 'mons before solely because of Slush Rush, and with every single user of the ability being perceived as either good or straight up broken.
In my opinion the order of things should have been the next one:
- Ban Sandslash-Alola.
- Take a look to the meta for a few days / weeks to see if Beartic itself is problematic for the tier.
- If it is, ban Slush Rush and unban Sandslash-Alola. If not, don't do anything.
I know it is a slow process, but I'd preffer a slow one over a bad decission for a tier.
Why?² Weve already seen over and over again how Slush Rush is broken and how it enables honestly bad Pokémon to be overbearing and unhealthy to the tier. We cant slow down our tiering when we have other things to look at and test every single Slush Rush threat (...which we kinda did) when the council and the NU community already both agree Slush Rush is the issue. We cant be in this constant state of "A, B and C are broken due to a shared mechanic. Ban A to see if B and C are still broken. If B and C are still broken, then ban B to see if C is broken. If C is still broken, then ban C". This would be the epitome of inefficient, slow tiering.
