Salamence is Uber.

[davud363000]

With the decline in Scizors, it seems that Alakazam can actually do a lot to the metagame, with a sub-3 attack set, switching in on and scaring away a fighting poke, and then proceeding to put a sub up and OHKO/2HKOing all of the Top-15 suspect pokes (with Suicune possibly surviving with 1.3% maximum), and outspeeding most of the pokes that are 2HKO's
EDIT: After rocks

 

[shrang]

This. I find OU was far more fun with Mence in it, rather than without. If I went purely by a desire for a more ideal metagame (by my standards at least), I'd keep a few pokemon like Mence who possess a degree of brokenness, just to keep things interesting and fun. That being said, I'm forced to remember that it's not about fun. It's about being absolutely fair, and rewarding the best players. It's not about being lazy and not wanting to face him (as some seem to think), it's about how Mence shifts the game into his favor the instant he comes into the field. It's about the fact that through his brokenness, he raised lesser players to a level of play they would otherwise not be a part of, and that's damaging to competitive play, no matter what game it is.

You'll have to remember that everyone who played OU had access to Salamence, so while it was agreed that Salamence was broken, it was still fair because there was no discrimination of who can use it. Whether you're a noob or a pro, you could use Salamence if you wanted, and obviously the best players would play Mence to the best of its ability, just like any other Pokemon.

 

[SJCrew]

Why do people play games competitively, especially here where no prizes are offered?

They play for the fun that comes with competition.

Right, but we can't measure or regulate fun, so our aim is to improve competition. Whether or not the game is fun without Salamence is purely subjective and therefore completely irrelevant. We wanted the level of competition to improve and for matches to be as dependent on skill and strategy as Pokemon would allow.

Slightly less skilled players could abuse Salamence and improve drastically. I'm not a top player, but DDMence ensured that I at least looked like one when I tossed it onto one of my gimmick teams and skyrocketed from the low 1400s to the 1500s. If you even have the faintest idea of what you're doing, the payoff is astronomical.

 

[Dan Dan]

I've found Porygon2 has it's niche back now it doesn't have to worry about Salamence's Draco Meteor :) And Kingdra is really awesome as well since it's a great switch in to most Heatran.

 

[SJCrew]

Ironically enough, a major part of its niche was countering DDMence. If we all wanted a perfect Gyarados counter, bulky Water types would suffice any day of the week.

 

[Matt_Lane]

Well I'm beginning to wonder if I would have rathered Salamence centralization or the new Heatran/water/grass centralization we're about to get...old meta is seeming better to be honest.

 

[SJCrew]

Grass/Water are not Pokemon, they're types. There are a shitload of Water and Grass Pokemon you can use to make up that core. Variety isn't really something to complain about at this point.

Also, there are things that laugh at that core like...oh hey, Dragonite. Draco Meteor/Espeed everything baby, oh yeah.

 

[Chou Toshio]

Right, but we can't measure or regulate fun, so our aim is to improve competition. Whether or not the game is fun without Salamence is purely subjective and therefore completely irrelevant. We wanted the level of competition to improve and for matches to be as dependent on skill and strategy as Pokemon would allow.

Slightly less skilled players could abuse Salamence and improve drastically. I'm not a top player, but DDMence ensured that I at least looked like one when I tossed it onto one of my gimmick teams and skyrocketed from the low 1400s to the 1500s. If you even have the faintest idea of what you're doing, the payoff is astronomical.

The point [Mr.Indigo]'s making is that the logic of TheValkaries post earlier is flawed. You are correct here that generally skill-based competition is fun, so we use "improving competition" as a an indicator of fun.

Despite this, the real objective is fun, part of which is competition. There is no reason to play this game, except for fun, and the superior game is more fun. What he's pointing out that TheValkaries earlier logic is flawed, because if (to TheValkaries) a salamence-metagame is more fun, than it is in fact the better/more competitive metagame.

Frankly speaking, there is no evidence whatsoever that a metagame with Salamence harms skilled players. Without question, in the metagame until now, the best and most dedicated players rose to the top, Salamence or no.

Even if you were to assume (and it's not a good assumption) that somehow Salamence hindered skilled players from winning sometimes due to luck, you have to keep in mind that pokemon has always been a game partly (sometimes extremely) based on luck, and the best player doesn't always win. This is why the ladder is the center of competitive battling, and recognition is given to those who win over the long run.

I don't think there's any question that even with Salamence around, the best players won over the long run, enhancing the point that the metagame was no less competitive or skill-oriented with mence.

So, if you do in fact perceive a metagame with mence as "more fun," than that actually is the superior metagame (though it's obvious that there are many who find the non-mence meta "more fun").


On a final note, let me leave you with the notion that you can talk to any dedicated Uber player, and they will tell you that the learning curve to Ubers is steep, and in fact, when the metagame isn't balanced, it almost requires more skill.

You will have to think very hard to come up with a good definition for "balanced" that doesn't sound like drivel.

 

[min min]

aero, stop souring us noobs, as the chinese say.
salamence centralisation was the crux of most of my teams, with stuff that killed mence and a whole lot else along with it. goodbye scarfrachi and subliechi mamo, not to mention scarfbomasnow and scarfgar.

 

[Indragon]

Scarfgar still revenges gyara, DDtar and ddnite. Explosion/trick could be useful too.

And who the hell even used Abomasnow? subliechi mamo is ridiculous too.

 

[MrIndigo]

The point [Mr.Indigo]'s making is that the logic of TheValkaries post earlier is flawed. You are correct here that generally skill-based competition is fun, so we use "improving competition" as a an indicator of fun.

Despite this, the real objective is fun, part of which is competition. There is no reason to play this game, except for fun, and the superior game is more fun. What he's pointing out that TheValkaries earlier logic is flawed, because if (to TheValkaries) a salamence-metagame is more fun, than it is in fact the better/more competitive metagame.

Indeed, this is exactly my point; although I actually support the Mence ban in as much as someone can when they don't actually play the metagame actively.

Frankly speaking, there is no evidence whatsoever that a metagame with Salamence harms skilled players. Without question, in the metagame until now, the best and most dedicated players rose to the top, Salamence or no.

Even if you were to assume (and it's not a good assumption) that somehow Salamence hindered skilled players from winning sometimes due to luck, you have to keep in mind that pokemon has always been a game partly (sometimes extremely) based on luck, and the best player doesn't always win. This is why the ladder is the center of competitive battling, and recognition is given to those who win over the long run.

I don't think there's any question that even with Salamence around, the best players won over the long run, enhancing the point that the metagame was no less competitive or skill-oriented with mence.

I agree that more skilled players are going to reach the top of the ladder regardless; the same is true under any regime, generally. And it is certainly the case that there is always some element of chance in pokemon.

The issue is when the aspect of chance outweighs the impact of skill; the biggest clamour for Salamence to be Uber seems to be coming from the middle ground of the ladder; the lower level tend to find it too hard to outplay people with Mence without using him themselves, and want it banned, and the upper tier seem to think it changes their skill-based strategies into prediction wars.

The upper tiers are where stall thrives. The middle tier is where the aggressive teams, where Mence is most successful, thrive, because it's where you need to get lucky streaks to help break through that 1400-1500 barrier. Salamence is a big contributor to the luck factor, because it converts the entire game down to a single prediction incident in most cases.

(I'm paraphrasing from an article about Laddering from the Smog a few months ago, this isn't just my opinion).

While competition is definitely an aspect to fun, it is also not the only one that is measured. I think overcentralisation generally leads to a less fun metagame (to draw a parallel, the reason the infamous Affinity ban occured in MtG was not because it was too powerful to beat, as the best deck in the format at the time was Tooth and Nail; it was because it was SO prolific that people found playing tournaments boring. They had to play Affinity at least once, usually multiple times, and it got to the point that attendance dropped dramatically as people found the game unfun).

I think the Fire/Water/Grass core creates far more variety than the Mence+Steel metagame, especially since the F/W/G core is not as essential in it's particular field (the vast majority of the standard metagame is outright worse off by not running Mence than if they did run it, which is less the case for F/W/G).

 

[Matt_Lane]

Grass/Water are not Pokemon, they're types. There are a shitload of Water and Grass Pokemon you can use to make up that core. Variety isn't really something to complain about at this point.

Also, there are things that laugh at that core like...oh hey, Dragonite. Draco Meteor/Espeed everything baby, oh yeah.

I don't think you can call Suicune, Starmie, and Swampert (the formers more than the latter) a variety of Water nor the Celebi, Breloom, Shaymin for the Grass spot to make up the core.

 

[un?lucky]

Having played suspect quite a bit I do not mind the banning of salamance due to more freedom to try new things in the team building process, but having said that I didn't really have a strong opinion on either side and would have been quite happy if the decision went the other other way, but what bothers me the most is how soon white and black will be here in relation to this ban.

I get the whole, if it's uber then it doesn't matter what time it gets banned, but I have to say that once gen 5 comes out I feel sorry for any veteran of the 4th gen, or any new comer wishing to try out the 4th gen metagame, because they won't experience the true metagame that we've been experiencing for the past 4 years. They won't have to face an offensive steel/dragon metagame which defined gen 4 (IMO) and as such they won't feel the special uniqueness gen 4 had.

It would be like me trying to play GSC right now but without being allowed to use blissey or snorlax. What i'd experience wouldn't be the same metagame that GSC had at its peak and so I'd be missing out on what it was truly like to play a stall based meta that included these pokes. That is what I think the biggest loss is for generation 4 in general....it's a small loss but a loss nether the less.

Having said that I do actually notice a difference playing without the threat of salamence so I am eager to see if the metagame starts to mirror the suspect's

 

[kd24]

the desicion wasn't made before the vote ... the vote is how we came to a desicion...

i really think you guys need to just accept mence's tiering. what's done is done - all these complaints and big issues should have been presented before, not afterwards.

on-topic, dnite usage is soaring, he is a very good pokemon that i just never really gave credit to, but oddly enough, grass-type usage isn't really rising. i dunno why, i figured shaymin/celebi would be everywhere but perhaps the constant threat of heatran / scizor having not lowered on ladder yet, is deterring people from using grass-types like shaymin more often. give it a month though, and i think the ladder will be dominated by it.

 

[alamaster]

In that case, why don't you step up and administer/figure out an acceptable system that can involve more members at a fraction of the time of our past suspect procedure.

We are currently nearing the end of 4th generation, and only now are we making this ban that so many in the thread are hailing as one of the most important tiering decisions of 4th generation. While I agree with other users that there will always be 4th gen players, and therefore there is meaning in "finalizing the 4th gen tier list," the fact that everyone refers to it as finalizing points out the issue-- we are reaching the end of 4th gen's life, and we're still not even completely settled with its tiers.

That my friend, is ridiculous. It's just too long a wait to have stable tier lists and stable rules.

The fact is, that "something as important as the tiering of a pokemon," is not all that important in the big scheme. Most of these suspect pokemon are so border-line as to whether they belong in OU or not, there is no real right or wrong, and the meta can live with or without them.

The game will survive. Competition will thrive-- and so we look to a faster process to bring us to focusing on the competition, not the tiering, sooner.

Does that mean more theorymon-based bans rather than experience based ones? Yes. Does that mean less representation in the decision making? Yes. Is that bad for competitive pokemon?

Frankly, not really-- no. Not nearly as bad as having to wait the whole life of a generation just to get a final tier list.


So, unless you are willing to convince Jump/Aeolus that something like fast public poles is a justified means of making tiering decisions (good luck with that, lol), this council system will be preferred to get the work done. When 5th Gen comes out, the council won't be deliberating on 1 pokemon-- but rather writing up an entire Uber list.


Remember folks:

a) These guys are our own. Come on-- have some faith.
b) It really doesn't matter whether suspect pokemon x is in or not. :/

Well see a better solution for everyone would be to have the same suspect process as before, just shortened. Does anyone really need 4 weeks to get requirements that usually take a day or two to achieve? If the process was shortened in that way everyone would benefit.

 

[Raikaria]

Of course the choice was made before the vote. By that time, everyone had enough time to make up their minds, and most people, not just the council, felt Mance was broken.

Let's up it this way. If you look back at the old RMT's, you'll notice they all had some form of Salamance check/counter. If they didn't, the raters would rip the team a new one, and declare it failed. Every single set where it would be viable to run an ice move, even HP Ice, had it as an option 'In case Mance switched in'. Scizor spiked in useage SO MUCH because Bullet Punch tore Mance apart, and it could switch in on anything but Fire Blast.

The old core was Latias/Mance + Heatran/Other Steel. The new core may be Heatran/Water/Grass, but that sort of core is still easily handled. Dragonite can dismantle it with Earthquake and Fire Blast, especially if the Water happens to be Emploeon or Tentacruel.

The banning of Salamance will help de-centralise the Metagame. The new king will be Heatran, but only because he's such a good glue/pivot. Heatran certainly isn't broken, especially as most teams will run a water-type, even if there were no Fire-types in the teir. When was the last time you saw a Heatran sweep? Clean-up duty, maybe, sweeping, no.

 

[Red G]

Of course the choice was made before the vote. By that time, everyone had enough time to make up their minds, and most people, not just the council, felt Mance was broken.

Let's up it this way. If you look back at the old RMT's, you'll notice they all had some form of Salamance check/counter. If they didn't, the raters would rip the team a new one, and declare it failed. Every single set where it would be viable to run an ice move, even HP Ice, had it as an option 'In case Mance switched in'. Scizor spiked in useage SO MUCH because Bullet Punch tore Mance apart, and it could switch in on anything but Fire Blast.

The old core was Latias/Mance + Heatran/Other Steel. The new core may be Heatran/Water/Grass, but that sort of core is still easily handled. Dragonite can dismantle it with Earthquake and Fire Blast, especially if the Water happens to be Emploeon or Tentacruel.

The banning of Salamance will help de-centralise the Metagame. The new king will be Heatran, but only because he's such a good glue/pivot. Heatran certainly isn't broken, especially as most teams will run a water-type, even if there were no Fire-types in the teir. When was the last time you saw a Heatran sweep? Clean-up duty, maybe, sweeping, no.

This quote speaks truth. With swampert, vappy, gyara, suicune, etc. Heatran won't be sweeping anytime soon. I like this new metagame, I can actually run less than 2 steels on a team.

btw- it's salamence

 

[akarias]

People ripped you apart for having gyara weak or tyranitar weak too. I mean you can't have multiple psychic pokes on your team cuz of tyranitar, right? Doesn't that take away from "diversity". No that's bullshi**, just like salamence's "support characteristic".

 

[Game Freak201]

I wonder why not much people are mentioning Kingdra. It's not a bad pokemon. In fact, its typing and good stats allow it to run DD or CS sets. Both of its abilities are also useful as well; though, you may be more inclined to run Sniper unless you're that afraid of RD teams.

 

[Chou Toshio]

The issue is when the aspect of chance outweighs the impact of skill; the biggest clamour for Salamence to be Uber seems to be coming from the middle ground of the ladder; the lower level tend to find it too hard to outplay people with Mence without using him themselves, and want it banned, and the upper tier seem to think it changes their skill-based strategies into prediction wars.

Keep in mind, that if your only purpose for banning Salamence comes from believing it "increases luck factors," than your primary suspect shouldn't be Salamence, it should be Machamp or Jirachi. Lead-Machamp in particular, turns the whole early game into nothing but a coin-flipping prediction/confusion war.

Jirachi not only Haxes like a bitch, but if you want to talk about a pokemon who can destroy you if you don't know its set-- there you go. Should I be forced to carry a Heatran on every team just to make sure I can counter every Jirachi? (argument sound familiar?)

There is precept for such a ban though. After all, Shaymin-S was banned almost purely because it increased chance factors. Half the pro-Uber argument was "Yes, we acknowledge pro-OU's arguments that Shaymin-S is not that good, and doesn't hit nearly hard enough-- Grass has sucky coverage, and Shaymin-S has several 100% counters . . ."

". . . but the damn thing is so f*ing haxxy!!"

I think the Fire/Water/Grass core creates far more variety than the Mence+Steel metagame, especially since the F/W/G core is not as essential in it's particular field (the vast majority of the standard metagame is outright worse off by not running Mence than if they did run it, which is less the case for F/W/G).

You mean Heatran (a steel type) / Water (which was dominant and central to the mence metagame or any metagame anyway, seeing as Water is one of the three best types and has lots of members) / Celebi (who was always top 20, and who is just coming in as a ok answer to increased water types, who are only seeing more play because without mence, water hast the most destructive offensive STAB)

Keep in mind in suspect, Flygon and Dragonite were both top 10 pokemon.

Also, keep in mind that there was a "bulky offensive" meta where almost every team ran Heatran / Celebi / Bulky Water, right after Garchomp and before Latias was introduced. If anything, Latias was the biggest factor in swaying from that metagame, not salamence. If the standard ladder didn't shift enough after the Latias ban, that's because it has more players and less initiative than the pool of players who participated in suspect ladder.

Even so, a metagame where every team is:

1)Heatran
2)Bulky Water
3)Celebi
4)Rotom or Zapdos
5 + 6) Some combination of Suicide Lead/Tyranitar/Flygon or Dragonite/Fighting Type/2nd Steel Type/2nd Water Type (if the first bulky water has different resists from Gyara or Swampert)

Is frankly not much more interesting-- it's actually much more predictable. Well, the metagame after Garchomp before Latias, the "Heatran Meta," or Bulky-Offense' golden age (though bulky offense is pretty dominant in general) was very predictable . . .

Well see a better solution for everyone would be to have the same suspect process as before, just shortened. Does anyone really need 4 weeks to get requirements that usually take a day or two to achieve? If the process was shortened in that way everyone would benefit.

You miss the point that the Council has to create an entire ban list, not just deal with 1 suspect at a time. When B&W comes out we want to be lenient with what we allow in initially in order to avoid unnecessary pre-emptive bans so we have to allow a lot of potential suspect pokemon at once (including any really bad-ass 600 BST pokes that BW brings)-- and yet we still want a ban list with relative consensus finished as quickly as possible. To me, a Council system makes the most sense.

That said, if Administration was actually up for it, I'd be all for something as liberal as a giant open pole listing 7-12 suspect pokemon and letting everyone vote as to whether they think each is broken or not.

. . . it'd be hilarious to put Jirachi and Machamp on the list and see what came out. lol

 

[SolCalibre]

Note: Sorry Haunter, i'll post a proper post.

Ok, The removal of salamence for the guys who did use him, yeah it may be a blow, however with him moving up, the guys below within the standard metagame may start to open up and actually be used without taking a shedload of damage or be afraid to switch in.

I may be daring even to use my gardevoir in a battle now that i won't have to worry about coming in on an outrage or an overpowered Draco Metoer (which is gardevoir's 2nd best stat) At least one less guy to worry about. W/o him, a lot of more sets will open up in the metagame and may even create new variety.

I also agree in heatran in a certain post, there are too many water types that will stare heatran in the face and making it want to switch out cause it hates getting wet and having it's steel rusted. And it's with him in the game, chances are that scizor may drop in useage because of tran and all the bulky waters, it'll get annoying for scizor to do anything but u-turn in every match unless the trainer knows the his opponents team and do something over than the that move.

 

[alamaster]

I'm not missing the point, my post was directed at suspect tests specifically, not creating a ban list at the beginning of the metagame. If I had to guess, I'd say that pokemon that are most obviously uber will be banned immediately, followed by a month or two of testing out the suspects and going from there. Now maybe this is just me, but I would much rather be involved in this process than not, and I feel it would be important for me to have my say. With the old process this was possible. The smogon council leaves many users powerless. But if we did speed things up (say a week or two of testing instead of a month) then everyone would be happy. The process would be quick and efficient while still giving qualified users their say in the matter.

 

[-Eddie-]

I prefer the old-OU metagame to the new one (it's too similar to UU for my taste).

While I did like the speed of process, I felt it was kind of inefficient. Honestly, I seriously doubt any of the higher up players (the ones who were most likely to be chosen) changed their minds at all from reading the posts in the Council thread. However (despite the almost unanimous decision in the Council), I believe it was tough decision to make and you can't blame them for expressing their opinions like any of us "normal" Smogonites would have done. And who knows, maybe Salamence will come back for review in 5th gen (with a 100 BP Outrage maybe?) and we'll vote again.

Also, I think Blissey (and maybe Snorlax?) and other Pokemon who are more specially bulky than physically bulky will become more popular since the Grass/Fire/Water core is more specially offensive than Steel/Dragon. I could also see bulky-offensive being even more dominant because it is now possible to play off resistances rather walls to take attacks.

Last thing: After 5th Gen comes out, how fast should we expect Shoddy to support it?

 

[SJCrew]

I don't think you can call Suicune, Starmie, and Swampert (the formers more than the latter) a variety of Water nor the Celebi, Breloom, Shaymin for the Grass spot to make up the core.

You're not restricted to just OUs. Things like Slowbro and Milotic (bulky Water types with good all around stats and reliable recovery) are still perfectly viable in OU, and now even moreso since they can focus on countering DDers without having to worry about getting hit by Draco Meteor. Don't forget Roserade for the Grass team either.

Even if that isn't a bountiful list, there's still way more in OU that aren't Fire, Water, nor Grass. They've worked back in the Salamence era and they're going to work now.

 

[TAY]

Keep in mind, that if your only purpose for banning Salamence comes from believing it "increases luck factors," than your primary suspect shouldn't be Salamence, it should be Machamp or Jirachi. Lead-Machamp in particular, turns the whole early game into nothing but a coin-flipping prediction/confusion war.

There are numerous other arguments for the banning of Salamence but even if you focus just on the luck-based arguments, this is not a fair comparison. The stakes for "losing" a game of luck against Jirachi or Machamp are much lower than they are against Salamence. Even if you guess wrong against either of them, if you're running a decent team you shouldn't even be losing a Pokemon. There are plenty of Pokemon that can switch into both of them (how often does Machamp really use Payback or Stone Edge on its first turn out?), and neither have moves that increase their speed. The only set that either of those two run that can sweep is CM Jirachi, which has a huge number of counters (Heatran, TTar, Ground types). By comparison, a wrong guess against Salamence is at best a lost Pokemon, and at worst a dragon dance sweep.

I do see where you're coming from with Machamp, but there is a major difference between "damn this thing is annoying" and "holy shit it just KO'd half my team". 55 base speed is also makes machamp extremely easy to outspeed, even for stall teams.

Jirachi not only Haxes like a bitch, but if you want to talk about a pokemon who can destroy you if you don't know its set-- there you go. Should I be forced to carry a Heatran on every team just to make sure I can counter every Jirachi? (argument sound familiar?)

Turns out Jirachi's coverage is pretty poor even when it uses all of its moveslots. Its moves also have low base power, and come from only 100 base attack / special attack. Salamence has perfect coverage with three moves and has higher attack and special attack than Jirachi. So while it may be true that Heatran counters the bulk of Jirachi's sets, there is a good chance that other Pokemon on your team will counter the set it is actually running (Swampert counters unless it has GK, TTar counters special sets, rotom counters physical sets). The threat of DD Salamence forces you to run either strong priority (i.e. CB Scizor) or a Scarfed pokemon with more than 100 base speed.

There is precept for such a ban though. After all, Shaymin-S was banned almost purely because it increased chance factors. Half the pro-Uber argument was "Yes, we acknowledge pro-OU's arguments that Shaymin-S is not that good, and doesn't hit nearly hard enough-- Grass has sucky coverage, and Shaymin-S has several 100% counters . . ."

". . . but the damn thing is so f*ing haxxy!!"

I don't think you quite understand what happened with Shaymin-S. Serene Grace was really the icing on the cake of an extremely powerful pokemon. Saying that skymin had any 100% counters is patently false; in fact, there was not a single OU Pokemon that could reliably switch into the sub-seed set. Anything that even got close (scarf jirachi and scarf heatran) could be easily KO'd by Earth Power.

Saying Shaymin-S didn't hit hard enough is also pretty laughable, considering it had a STAB 120 base power move with an 80% chance to cut spdef in half. And it isn't like 120 base special attack is even close to being low.

Shaymin-S' movepool had extremely good coverage. Nothing switches into Seed Flare / Air Slash / Earth Power besides Zapdos, which had around a 70% chance to lose anyway if it switched into Seed Flare and SR.

The real powerhouse set was sub-seed, though. Shaymin-S is faster than every grass Pokemon and has a STAB move with a 60% chance to flinch that is super effective against everything that is immune to leech seed. If Jirachi had 25 more base speed and 20 more base attack and a 120 base power move with a ridiculous secondary effect then it would probably be worth banning too.

stuff regarding the suspect metagame

Bashing the suspect metagame after only a month isn't really fair...the metagame will likely change drastically as time goes on. I am reminded of my triple dragon triple steel team that dominated the latias suspect test which was impotent a few weeks later.

You miss the point that the Council has to create an entire ban list, not just deal with 1 suspect at a time. When B&W comes out we want to be lenient with what we allow in initially in order to avoid unnecessary pre-emptive bans so we have to allow a lot of potential suspect pokemon at once (including any really bad-ass 600 BST pokes that BW brings)-- and yet we still want a ban list with relative consensus finished as quickly as possible. To me, a Council system makes the most sense.

I agree that the council should be creating an entire ban list. Still, that does not mean that banning salamence is not a step in the right direction. I think it would be extremely difficult to create a balanced OU metagame with Salamence in it.

That said, if Administration was actually up for it, I'd be all for something as liberal as a giant open pole listing 7-12 suspect pokemon and letting everyone vote as to whether they think each is broken or not.

Letting "everyone" vote on tiering is an incredibly bad idea. Having highly qualified members of the community make tiering decisions might not be great in terms of PR, but it certainly will yield better results.